Look, I like change and all, but this one is just a mess. I’ve tried but the similarity of letters of BCE CE and the religious system’s calendar which has been the common calendar of BC (and AD) now cause a unnecessary pause to figure out WTF time they are talking about on both timelines, which are the same, but the terms are different but enough the same that it causes this pause.
An major example of good intentions gone wrong. Now we have 2 time line, the second one totally unneeded as it is the first one, also with common related letters that are interchangeable and confusing. I won’t even go into the CE/BCE being re-coopted as the Before Christan Era /Christan Era - so both will always co-exist.
It also reasserts that Christianity is the defacto eternal standard, as that is what we use as out standard of time and that modern society has agreed to this with the new system.
I’m not saying don’t make a new calendar, I’m not saying make it non-religious, I’m saying what was done with BCE/CE did not serve either purpose and is a benefit to no body
Maybe not to you, but to people growing up and learning it for the first time, they will consider CE and BCE to be the default and a hundred years from now nobody will even remember we used to use BC and AD
I always thought it was a nice, clean solution: exact same years, zero math involved (no Jewish calendar or Stardates to convert to).
And you don’t have to think about Jesus or his birthday (which I could see an Atheist/Jew/Muslim/Free Agent* being annoyed by). Plus it’s not like his birthday was on ‘January One, Year Zero’ anyhow, so that Anno Domini stuff doesn’t hold water anyhow.
*Or worse, a Recovering Fundie. Life ain’t easy for us…
“Christian” era? Common era, you mean. I can why a lot of people might believe “C.E.” stands for “Christian Era”, though. A lot of people think (or thought) that “A.D.” meant “After Death.”
It’s just a cowardly evasion to pretend it isn’t christian dating. As a fad it never caught on in Britain, and will probably be regarded as an historical curiosity in 50 years time, much the same as we now regard the extraordinary antics of the 1920s.
I am certainly not christian ( nor any other religion ) but to consciously pretend it means common era when it fits to, and is begotten of, the birth of Christ, seems not only pathetic, but as doomed as persuading the muslim world that the date of the Hegira now marks the death of the Regent of Japan, and they should in future downplay the Prophet to please a bunch of europeans’s over-exquisite whininess.
Good luck with that.
What do you mean, “pretend”? There is no pretense in recognizing that the Gregorian calendar, along with its historical era of which this is year 2014, is now a worldwide standard used by historically Christian and non-Christian cultures alike. It is in literal truth an era “common” to most of the modern world.
That recognition doesn’t in any way contradict or deny the fact that this calendar era has its historical origins in Christian culture. Nobody is trying to “persuade” Christians that the Common Era is anything but another name for their Anno Domini.
But it makes perfect sense to have a new, secular name for calendar concepts that have expanded beyond a particular religious community to serve a more general purpose in more diverse populations. Similarly, it makes perfect sense to refer to “the weekend” rather than “the Sabbath days”.
Personally, I don’t have any quarrel with the traditional BC/AD nomenclature, and I willingly use it where, e.g., editors or publishers expect me to use it in compliance with their house rules. But I think it’s silly to find fault with having an alternative name for it that’s more general and less sectarian.
W-w-wait, what? “After Death”?!? Do they think Jesus was born in Year Zero, but then we measure AD from his death… 35 years later? So there’s a third of a century unaccounted for? And anything that happened during Jesus’s lifetime has no date?*
And if you say "Well, they say “After Death”, but they really mean “After Birth” – that’s pretty stupid, too.
Excuse my head exploding at people’s ignorance.
*So, Augustus Caesar died between “Before Christ” and “After Death”, so Tiberius became his successor in… umm, no particular year.
“Hey, Lazarus, we missed ya-- when’d you get back?”* “Uhh, Tuesday of… lemme check my calendar… oh, crap, that’s right.”*
This is actually another reason it makes sense to have the alternative BCE/CE nomenclature, as the transition from 1 BCE to 1 CE is easier to understand when you’re not distracted by fallacious notions of how the lifespan of the historical Jesus fits into it.
I didn’t realize it was quite that old, but I went to a Catholic high school and I remember seeing it over 20 years ago (in my Catholic school), so I’m surprised it’s controversial or confusing at all.