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[Sheb]

Also, AD and BC are only used in English.

[Kadzar]

In shocking news BP really hates Muslims.

Actually, the jews invented the B.C.E and C.E.

At first I thought this was a conspiracy theory thing, but, no, checking the wikipedia page for Common Era shows it's true. There was someone actually offended by it, and not just people offended on other's behalf. I probably should have tried looking up B.C.E. before making this thread, but, as I said in the OP, I was a bit insomniac at the time.

Also, not trying to invoke Godwin or anything, but I saw that apparently the Nazis at one point adopted B.C.E. into use, because they considered B.C./A.D. not "Germanic" enough, and so unwittingly used a Jewish-derived system, which is hilarious.

[Graknorke]

Shhht. The existence of the UN's black helicopter-carried spec op team that shoot down anyone trying to use another calendar is classified.

Please, I'd like to see you doing business and otherwise organising things with people using a different calender system to you.

[Mictlantecuhtli]

PTW

[Glowcat]

B.C./A.D. seems like it's a holdover from days of state religion and of course since Christianity is still the hegemony of the United States it's going to be further protected by status quo intractability. Islamic countries and the Hebrew calender also use their respective religions as a dating orientation device but the United States is, ostensibly, a secular country and unless people are writing directly to people with regards to a religious orient there should probably be consideration that not everybody is comfortable with such ingrained indications of "normality" when many Christians are still marginalizing them today for being different.

As such, even though it is an incredibly minor (even negligible) point in dealing with the cultural sphere and its ability to shift people to the fringes of society, I'd prefer if people did away with the silly connotation which doesn't even reflect the date Jesus was supposed to have been born in.

[Rolan7]

There was someone actually offended by it, and not just people offended on other's behalf.

I'm not offended on behalf of the Jews, I'm offended as an agnostic.  Any non-Christian has a right to be offended by this.

Though it's really not a big deal...  It's a relic of the past, and I'm pretty sure people are generally switching to BCE and CE where it matters.  I'm just surprised at some of the resistance in this thread, like claiming AD isn't specifically referring to Christ.  Or that it's fair because Christianity used to control much of the world.

Or all the people speaking up just to say they don't care, heh.

Also, not trying to invoke Godwin or anything, but I saw that apparently the Nazis at one point adopted B.C.E. into use, because they considered B.C./A.D. not "Germanic" enough, and so unwittingly used a Jewish-derived system, which is hilarious.

That is hilarious indeed!

[cerapa]

B.C./A.D. seems like it's a holdover from days of state religion and of course since Christianity is still the hegemony of the United States it's going to be further protected by status quo intractability. Islamic countries and the Hebrew calender also use their respective religions as a dating orientation device but the United States is, ostensibly, a secular country and unless people are writing directly to people with regards to a religious orient there should probably be consideration that not everybody is comfortable with such ingrained indications of "normality" when many Christians are still marginalizing them today for being different.

As such, even though it is an incredibly minor (even negligible) point in dealing with the cultural sphere and its ability to shift people to the fringes of society, I'd prefer if people did away with the silly connotation which doesn't even reflect the date Jesus was supposed to have been born in.

I am an atheist from one of the most secular countries in the world, with the smallest proportion of people believing that religion is important in their life.

I also regularly use religious phrases and swears, our years are "after Christ" and "before Christ" and our anthem asks god to watch over our country. If you have problems with keeping religion out of politics or culture, then changing the way you refer to years isn't going to accomplish much. All these things are just surface details, unimportant ones.

[Neonivek]

What? People trying to solve problems through superficial methods so as to not affect the status quo?

Say it aint so!

[Orange Wizard]

I think the point is that it actually doesn't matter. At all. I don't really give a sod about the whole AD/CE/BC/BCE thing. Except that BCE has three letters instead of two, and making the switch seems like a lot of effort in comparison to the benefits.

Why is it a problem?

[Frumple]

Often times, if you manage to change the superficial stuff, the underlying problems become more tractable. It's one of the specific reasons activist groups will go after relatively minor things instead of major, game-changing things -- because if you get enough minor changes through, the major ones become a lot more likely.

Similarly, with cases like this, the less a (undesirably) culturally hegemonic thingjigger is referenced in general, the harder it is for that hegemony to stay entrenched. The less it is culturally normal to reference the subject in question, the less it is seen as culturally normal to preference said subject in other ways.

In other words, stop slapping the gorram christian references on bloody everything and it stops being so bloody influential. Kill the sacred duck, and then you get to kill the sacred cow once people start thinking it, also, is a duck.

[Dutchling]

This looks remarkably uninteresting.

PTW.

[Orange Wizard]

I'm pretty sure that's not how it works.

Britain, for example, is pretty much a theocracy. They have bishops in the sodding House of Lords. But at the same time, few people there actually care about God/Bible stuff. It's just a thing that's there and doesn't actually affect anything.
Admittedly, the US has many many crazy religious people. But if the non-religious people start going all "hurr durr we must destroy all religions", it's not going to fix the problem - assuming you even think religions are a problem in the first place.

[Frumple]

"Hurr durr destroy religions" is neither the point nor a goal, fruitperson. It's to stop using excluding language when possible, particularly for general use stuff. Things like this topic is small potatoes... but it is potatoes. And every little bit helps break a cultural belief that it's okay to just casually disregard huge swathes of the human population without good reason. Even just suborning a previously established system with more currently palatable terminology is pretty good -- what christians did to winter solstice is a pretty good example case of how to do this sort of thing, in general.

People get influenced by subconscious junk all the ruddy time, and stuff like the AD/BC thing is precisely the sort of venue that sort of thing works through. Few singular instances are major influences, but the issue is in congregate -- thousands of little things working together to foster, say, xenophobia or bigotry or whatever particular strain of virulent ignorance is in vogue at this moment. With this one, it's one tiny message saying, "We don't give a fuck about anyone not part or descendant of the christian cultural hegemony" and another tiny one saying, "Christian terminology in our culture is normal and acceptable, even if it's effectively snubbing parts of our population". Sure, it's just tiny ones, and singular instances, but in the face of dozens or hundreds of similar messages, it adds the zog up.

Is it really not evident why things like that shouldn't be changed, when possible?

[Flying Dice]

I'm pretty sure that's not how it works.

Britain, for example, is pretty much a theocracy. They have bishops in the sodding House of Lords. But at the same time, few people there actually care about God/Bible stuff. It's just a thing that's there and doesn't actually affect anything.
Admittedly, the US has many many crazy religious people. But if the non-religious people start going all "hurr durr we must destroy all religions", it's not going to fix the problem - assuming you even think religions are a problem in the first place.

There's a reason for this. Britain shipped all their crazies over to the colonies after they got fed up enough with them.

That aside, what Frumple said. The goal is to chip away at the hold of organized religion on a nominally secular country. Whatever progress we can get, we'll take; arguing that it's too small to matter is meaningless.

B.C./A.D. seems like it's a holdover from days of state religion and of course since Christianity is still the hegemony of the United States it's going to be further protected by status quo intractability. Islamic countries and the Hebrew calender also use their respective religions as a dating orientation device but the United States is, ostensibly, a secular country and unless people are writing directly to people with regards to a religious orient there should probably be consideration that not everybody is comfortable with such ingrained indications of "normality" when many Christians are still marginalizing them today for being different.

As such, even though it is an incredibly minor (even negligible) point in dealing with the cultural sphere and its ability to shift people to the fringes of society, I'd prefer if people did away with the silly connotation which doesn't even reflect the date Jesus was supposed to have been born in.

I am an atheist from one of the most secular countries in the world, with the smallest proportion of people believing that religion is important in their life.

I also regularly use religious phrases and swears, our years are "after Christ" and "before Christ" and our anthem asks god to watch over our country. If you have problems with keeping religion out of politics or culture, then changing the way you refer to years isn't going to accomplish much. All these things are just surface details, unimportant ones.

Change has to start somewhere. You don't magically clap your hands to dramatically alter the world. To use a good example, look at the civil rights movement in the U.S., or the movement for womens' suffrage before it. Neither accomplished what they did in a single stroke, but rather by spending decades leveraging everything possible and grabbing every hand- and foothold they could find. Incidentally, the "Under God" in the U.S. pledge of allegiance in 1954. Prior to the 20th century and post-early colonial days, the U.S. was actually remarkably secular in most public institutions; the new evangelism only really started to surge during the Cold War. I'm hardly going to refrain from pushing back against deliberate attempts to mold the culture and government of a secular state into a Christian image.

[Playergamer]

i remember reading that the pledge of allegiance was actually written by a socialist, and people were supposed to give a salute while saying it that totally didn't look exactly like the nazi one. things became really awkward around 1941.