Well, it’s “common” because it’s used across multiple cultures, some of which have alternate year systems, like Chinese and Jewish people. It’s the only numbering system which is **common **to all (most?) peoples on Earth regardless of local tradition.
IAN John Mace and have no authority to speak for him, but what I thought he was saying is just that Christians would be “deluded” if they believed that the abbreviation “CE” actually stood for “Christian Era”. Because in fact its official referent is “Common Era”.
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Yes it has!
Oh, and Malacandra: You’ll be hard pressed to find a more religion-friendly atheist on this MB than yours truly. I’ve defended religious people more times than I can count.
I thought he was saying non-Christians were deluded if they thought CE/BCE were more inclusive descriptors. 'Cause they are.
Only due to the present use of european/american culture as dominant fashion. 500 years and other systems may be predominant, or none if different peoples prefer local systems as they had in the past. Just as they will probably wear different clothes to today, or have very different values ( killing surplus infants appears to have been common everywhere: no reason to think that present abhorrence is automatically set in stone ).
2014 is 2767 Ab urbe condita. No-one gets bent whether the first stone was laid in 753 BC or dated from the completion of the walls, or whether the year chosen as the first year was 30 years +/-; just that there is a coherent accepted first date. I’ve no objection to a new dating system for those who want one, just to keeping the same one and giving it a gloss catering to those who wish there is not a religious component when there is one.
Personally, I’ve never been a fan of the use of CE/BCE instead of AD/BC. The reason being that because it exactly coincides, so it brings nothing new to the table while intending to sort of ignore that it has it’s basis in Christian tradition. If anything, I think it creates new problems because the whole idea that AD became the common era is because Christianity has been the dominant religion in the Western world for such a long time. I don’t see how acknowledging that the dating system has those roots in any way condones or condemns the teachings of Christianity than, say, using the names of the days of the week has any real-world relevance to their roots in paganism.
I don’t take any offense at it, and I’m not confused by it, it just seems unnecessary. I’d generally not care enough to bother with pitting the whole concept, but since it’s here, I guess I might as well throw in my thoughts.
How much old English do you know? Or Latin?
We can forget about BC and AD as its blatantly Christian, getting rid of such symbols of religious influence can only be good
A little Latin, very little Old English. However, I can (and often do) easily read books and other materials from 100 years ago or more, which was the time period in question, or even several hundred without much difficulty. Please set up your straw men elsewhere.
And the point is that the CE, BCE system is still based in Christianity, it is just dishonestly dissembling about it.
My opinion is – how can I put this? Oh yeah, “Meh.”
As a Christian, I’m not at all bothered by BCE/CE - although I don’t really get the point. As others in the thread have alluded to, we still recognize days of the week and months of the year named for Gods that not everyone (or no one) believes in. Feeling excluded or offended by AD seems to me about as sensible as being offended by Thor’sday or Janu-ary.
But, I recognize that as a Christian myself I may have a blind spot here and it doesn’t do me any harm to use BCE/CE in secular or academic settings. For casual use - and certainly liturgical use - BC/AD is fine.
Oh please, its no straw man. The only thing wrong was your assertion that somehow there would be a huge detriment to…I dunno, reading? if we moved away from BC/AD. Things will progress as they always do and it doesn’t matter at all if we get rid of these symbols. The good is in ridding ourselves however slightly of these religious symbols
Yes, unfortunately we’re too married to the year numbers to do much about that, but ridding ourselves of even a little bit of religious domination is a good thing
How is it a good thing? People are always going to ask why the BCE/CE changeover happens where it does.
Very true, but so what? Calling the current international-standard era the “Common Era” doesn’t imply that everybody’s expected to go on using it forever. If/when future cultures want to change its name and/or discard it in favor of a different calendar era, they can do that.
As I mentioned above, do you also complain that people don’t still say “the Sabbath days” instead of “the weekend”, on the grounds that it obscures the “religious component” of having the official break in the standard workweek fall on Saturday and Sunday?
No, I doubt you do, because that would be silly. Just as it’s silly to complain about other people using a similarly generic secular term for a calendar era that is Christian in origin but now common to Christian and non-Christian cultures alike.
There is nothing whatever “dishonest” or “anti-religious domination” about it, any more than it’s “dishonest” or “anti-religious” to use the term “weekend” instead of “Sabbath”, or “spring term” instead of “Easter term” (or, for that matter, “holidays” instead of “Christmas”).
Please, people, untwist your War-on-Christmas panties and recognize that introducing generic secular descriptors for concepts that have now become cross-cultural standards beyond their original religious contexts is not somehow inherently anti-religious. Nor is it some kind of attempt to deny or cover up the specific religious origins of such standards.
It’s just a pragmatic acknowledgement of the fact that the standards’ current cultural roles extend beyond their specific religious origins.
So now we know that there are 750mL in a fifth and 1.5L in a handle. That’s sufficient.
We can start dating the BCE/CE changeover to… hmm… let’s see… ah! Gaius Caesar’s attainment of consulship. Or the Yuanshi era starts.
Why are religious names for days and months okay?
Unlike the length of the day and the year, there is no natural reason to start a year numbering system at any particular year. Since the West uses the current one, I’m fine with it. I’ve noted that academic works tend to use BC and BCE where needed, and does anyone except cornerstones use AD any more?
As for AD being after death - I propose we hold that for renumbering the calendar after the zombie apocalypse.
Nice try to justify the use of “common”, but its clearly a descriptor of “eras” and not “numbering systems”. The only thing that makes this a “common era” is that we are all in it right now.
We are not only all in it, we’re all (or almost all) using it. Not just majority-Christian or historically-Christian cultures.
See the Government of India website in Hindi? See that “2014” in the middle of the nagari script? That’s Anno Domini/Common Era dating. You’ll find similar uses of this era in official information from governments and organizations in China, Japan, Turkey, you name it.
When a particular calendric system has become the de facto international standard among hundreds of cultures and states irrespective of their historical connection to its religious origins, it makes perfect sense to call such a system “common”.
So?
Those religions are dead and do not continue to exert an influence, so their existence is a novelty unlikely to produce bad results.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but worship of the old pagan deities still exists.
Their worshippers do not directly command any secular influence based upon their religious beliefs, but they do exist.
Even if Asatru became a significant religion, I doubt that anyone would be required to sacrifice goats to Thor every Thursday. I know the point is rather pedantic, but hey, this IS the SDMB, right? 
When I studied anthropology in college, we always used BCE and CE when we didn’t use BP (before present) for very old dates in archeology. It is the international standard in that field as far as I know.
What “bad results” do you feel the use of BC/AD era notation produces?
Like I said, I think the use of the alternative BCE/CE notation is perfectly sensible and acceptable, but arguing that BC/AD notation in itself is somehow bad or pernicious just seems silly.