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[Zangi]

To answer OP: As an atheist, don't matter at all to me.  Its just what humanity has been using for... over 2000 years.  So it is what it is.  No need to get uppity about it and change what ain't broke.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

To answer OP: As an atheist, don't matter at all to me.  Its just what humanity has been using for... over 2000 years.  So it is what it is.  No need to get uppity about it and change what ain't broke.

It was actually codified centuries after Jesus. And it isn't what a good portion of humanity uses.

[Frumple]

Gregorian calendar didn't kick into use until the late 1500s

Julian calendar, which it was based on, has been around since ~45 BCE, though. Obviously enough, it didn't use AD or BC. That didn't start being used until part way through the 500s. I guess being off by only five hundred years isn't too bad...?

[Zangi]

Well... let me put it another way... don't confuse me with your fancy changing shit cause you offended people are getting uppity about it.

[ggamer]

@OP probably

IIRC It was a standard used in the western world for well over six centuries tho, so it'd be a pain in the ass to come up with a new one

The change sort of comes because some people feel as though they need to score more victories over a religion that's becoming more and more marginalized as the years go on

Mainly it's because using religious terms to describe systems of measurement sounds completely bonkers in a world where it's rapidly approaching popular opinion that science and religion are not allowed to exist together

However if standardizing dates means one more step towards globalization, I'm on board.

[Bohandas]

I'm somewhere between agnostic and ninilist and I don't have a problem with AD and BC.

What the letters stand for doesn't matter because nobody ever uses (or ever needs to use) the unabbreviated form anyway (except as a spuriously affected show of pretentiousness). It's like the phrase "o'clock" when telling time, it doesn't matter that it stands for "of the clock", which is a grammarical nightmare, due to the fact that nobody ever uncontracts it.

At any rate, I don't see the words "Anno Domini" so much as referring to Christ as much as being a collection of meaningless gibberish in a dead language, like the Rx symbol on medical prescriptions (which stands for recipere, "take thusly". A statement which is wholly redundant with the rest of the document unless it is very VERY poorly written)

[Kadzar]

Year 2000 was quite a big thing, it should be the basis of a new modern year system. So now would be 14 Y2K and 2000 years ago would be 2000 B2K

:v

But nothing really happened in 2000. People just thought the world was going to end because computers had the wrong date formatting, but people fixed everything before it could even maybe do that, so Y2K rolled around and people were like, "well, at least it's a nice big round number."

Obviously we need to base our new system off of September 11, 2001. Because it changed everything. Everything!

So now would be the year Y2K+1 Never Forget o7.

[DJ]

If we want to be really offensive, there's already a Year Zero, and it's 1975.

[Bohandas]

Year 2000 was quite a big thing, it should be the basis of a new modern year system. So now would be 14 Y2K and 2000 years ago would be 2000 B2K

:v

But nothing really happened in 2000. People just thought the world was going to end because computers had the wrong date formatting, but people fixed everything before it could even maybe do that,

One has to wonder if these were the same people who later thought that the world was going to end in 2012; I mean that was basically the same thing, some stupid calendar runs out and everybody panics. I wonder how these folks celebrate New Year's Eve, they probably hide in a bunker every year because their wall calendar doesn't go past December 31st.

[Kadzar]

Actually, the world did almost end in 2012, but a group of brave adventurers fought off the Mayan gods before they could actually do that. It turns out the world almost ends all the time, but there's always a small group of people who avert disaster at the last second to prevent it. So obviously it's nothing to base a calendar off of.

[Culise]

@OP probably

IIRC It was a standard used in the western world for well over six centuries tho, so it'd be a pain in the ass to come up with a new one

The change sort of comes because some people feel as though they need to score more victories over a religion that's becoming more and more marginalized as the years go on

Mainly it's because using religious terms to describe systems of measurement sounds completely bonkers in a world where it's rapidly approaching popular opinion that science and religion are not allowed to exist together

However if standardizing dates means one more step towards globalization, I'm on board.

Pretty much my opinion as well.  SI might have stuck pretty well otherwise, but essentially the only relics we have left to us of the French metricization of time units are the names of events like the Thermidorian Reaction (taking place in the month of Thermidor).  When it comes to something as intrinsic and commonly-used as time, any change more difficult than filing off the name plates gets to be not only exceptionally difficult from a social perspective, but expensive from an economic one, and that's all the more true in the modern day that has rooted so much on its present systems of measurements. 

Besides, I was actually under the assumption that the Common Era wasn't a method of religious "sterilization", but simply just a convenient way to side-step the question of precisely when Jesus of Nazareth was born, and the question of what to do if/when it comes out that he was most likely born at some earlier or later date.  That is, it was more akin to the redefinitions of SI length units to scale to the speed of light, which was defined as precisely 299792458 metres/second (as opposed to, say, the convenient number of three-hundred million, but would require us to replace every metric ruler in existence for starters), and one that doesn't raise the somewhat-awkward question of what to do with a system that may well be six years late to its own zero-point.  It seems I was a bit incorrect in that, but I don't believe that it is a poor reason, nonetheless.   

[Helgoland]

We need a neutral zero date, right? How about June 4th, 1989 - nothing of note happened that date.

[Rolan7]

@OP probably

IIRC It was a standard used in the western world for well over six centuries tho, so it'd be a pain in the ass to come up with a new one

That's why the Common Era alternative is a name change, it doesn't actually change the numbers at all.  It's impractical and unnecessary to change the point in time.

The change sort of comes because some people feel as though they need to score more victories over a religion that's becoming more and more marginalized as the years go on

The Jews weren't trying to "score a victory", they were avoiding denying their faith.  They shouldn't have to say "This happened 100 years Before Christ" because they don't believe Christ (their messiah) has arrived yet.  And neither should anyone else.  I don't want to say I live in the 2014th "Year of our lord (Jesus Christ)".  This is a matter of dignity.

Rant about Christianity being supposedly "marginalized" as it dominates my country:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It sounds like there are parts of the world where Christianity is so powerless that people are fine using its prayers in place of scientific terms.  That's not true in America or MANY other parts of the world, though.  The Christian Right (which doesn't represent all Christians, but sure as hell tries) works tirelessly to legislate religious "morality" and keep their symbols in government in schools.  They do an amazing job, based on these stats (from 2010):

89.3% of Congress was openly Christian, 8.4% Jewish, and 0.6% unaffiliated.  There was one atheist, the first ever and last since.
78.4% of America was openly Christian, 1.7% Jewish, and 16.1% unaffiliated. 

So no, Christianity does not get to play the victim card here.  Judeo-Christianity is massively in the majority AND wildly over-represented.  The only reason the USA isn't a theocracy is that most Christians here are decent people who believe in freedom and the principles of the nation.  (And only going to church on Easter)

Imagine if these terms asserted the truth of any other active world religion, and thus denied Christianity.  Even casual Christians would be uncomfortable with it, and for good reason.

Mainly it's because using religious terms to describe systems of measurement sounds completely bonkers in a world where it's rapidly approaching popular opinion that science and religion are not allowed to exist together

However if standardizing dates means one more step towards globalization, I'm on board.

Religion was always welcome to use the scientific method
And in fact, it did...  Very religious people were often major innovators.  Sure the Catholic church tried to squash some dangerous ideas, but Catholic monks were librarians, scribes, and teachers.  Not many people were educated in that place and time, or dedicated to lives of observation.  They preserved the knowledge of Rome and made advances of their own.

There are still plenty of scientists who are religious, too.  Not those fundamentalists who crank out untestable theories under the guise of "science", and play the victim whenever they're called out on it...

But there's a big difference between choosing names for terms from mythology, and naming half of all time "Christ's dominion"

[Orange Wizard]

Imagine if these terms asserted the truth of any other active world religion, and thus denied Christianity.  Even casual Christians would be uncomfortable with it, and for good reason.

Well, if militant Buddhists (somehow) took over the world and got everyone to use their Before Buddha and After Buddha date system, I honestly wouldn't care - except perhaps because I'd need to learn a new calendar.
The reason being that Buddha is fairly meaningless to me. He supposedly founded a religion that I don't believe in.
Of course, the cultural difference of being in a Buddhist-dominated nation is another story entirely, but I can't see saying that I was born in AB 1578 (or whatever) being particularly offensive.

[andrea]

Can we perhaps go back to measuring time from the founding of Rome? I always liked ab Urbe Condita. It is a fair bit longer than both anno domini and common era however.