Why in the name of holy hell do we have CE and BCE? What the fuck was wrong with BC and AD?
Yes, I know, they’re kind of Christian, and shit. But isn’t the whole CE thing kind of like closing the barn door after 2,000 years’ worth of cattle have run the hell off?
It’s not a goddamn Common Era. 1 AD (or AD 1 or even just AD or whatever) is just the poorly-calculated date upon which Jesus H. Christ was supposed to have been born. While it may warm the cockles of one’s heart, 1 AD is not a particularly significant date for anyone but the Christians. Ganesh didn’t get his new head that year. Gautama didn’t find just the right tree that year. Odin didn’t find his mighty sword Volhada and smite the beast Arundel for eating the peasants of Denmark that year (or whatever).
You get the point. We’re pretty much fucking stuck with the Gregorian calendar until Christianity is no longer the flavor of the month… er… last couple millenia, so we’re stuck with its terminology too.
When the Romans found Jesus (he WAS behind the couch!) we didn’t get new names for the days. They sucked it up and continued to honor poor Saturn with a day of sleeping-in.
Same goes for the months.
Apart from anything else, learning dates was already confusing as could be when I was a littl’un. Then one day someone said, “no, dear, that happened in 44 BCE”.
Of course, I consulted my textbook, then beat her with it. But other kids may not be as forgiving.
Well, at least we know where you got your username.
(In cased you have missed it, 2007 does indicate the Common Era. Businesses and computer systems around the world use 2007 (beginning on the Western January 1), regardless whether the local calendar is dated from (one reckonung of) the Creation or from the Hijra or continues to follow the Julian calendar or follows the various reckonings of people of Eastern Asia or whatever.)
I’m not sure why it bothers you so much. It is not as though your desire to impose your cultural limitations on other peoples actually comes up, regularly, in day-to-day life.
BTW, if you are going to get all huffy about using A.D., it should be noted that in correct usage A.D always precedes the year. “The year of the Lord 2007,” NOT “2007 Year of the Lord.”
Well, if all you gentiles would just use the proper calendar, and accept that it’s 5768, there’d be no need for this CE and BCE that bothers you so much.
More seriously, AIUI the dating CE and BCE were pioneered by a religious group that believes that talking about the arrival of a messiah as a historical event is a bit premature. Considering the term messiah is from their religion, originally, I don’t really think that they’re going off into woo-woo land to refuse to use dating conventions that are predicated on something that they’re still waiting to have happen.
Besides, there’s something really FUBAR about the fact that many current estimates have the birth of Christ (If such an event actually happened.) occurring in the year 4 BC. Using BCE, instead, really makes more sense to my mind, just for that.
i agree that renaming the era is not a good idea, like trying to rewrite history. i therefore suggest that this year be named S.D. 34, the better to count the years it takes for Og to fight ignorance.
seriously though, when do you think a new age will come and enable us to drop the Gregorian count? nation of one? space age? post-[del]apocalypse[/del] nuclear holocaust? (even our words are christian!)
b) There’s nothing wrong with rewriting history. Rewriting history is what historians do, and when they do it well it can lead to a fuller, more complex understanding of the past.
The thing is, it is the Common Era. Look closely at this Chinese-language web page run by the Godless Communistic Red Chinese; note that the Arabic numerals “2007” appear several times. This mainly Hebrew web page of the state broadcasting agency of an officially Jewish state includes the Gregorian date. Those Ganesh-worshipping Hindus may not give a shit about the birth year of Jesus (correct or not), but this Hindi web page of a major Indian newspaper includes the Gregorian date. People all over the planet use the Gregorian calendar these days (albeit in many areas alongside another calendar). Note that the New York Times feels no particular need to tell us how long it’s been since the Hegira or how many years we are into the reign of the current Emperor of Japan alongside the incorrect reckoning of how many years it’s been since the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. “2007” is the closest thing the planet has to a common year.
As you suggest, perhaps someday we’ll abandon the Gregorian Calendar in favor of some shiny space age calendar which dates everything from the Trinity test or Apollo 11 or the date Skynet first became active. Although the French Revolutionaries were unsuccessful in ditching the old calendar, and I don’t believe the (notoriously atheistic) Bolsheviks even bothered to try, except to switch from the (historically Christian) Julian calendar to the (historically Christian) Gregorian calendar. But like it or not, for the forseeable future, the Gregorian calendar has become the default “common era” for pretty much the Planet Earth. The terms “Common Era” and “Before the Common Era” just allow Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, and all the rest of us heathens to use the de facto Earth Standard Calendar without pledging allegiance to Jesus as Our Lord. Until the U.N. Black Helicopters start carting off Christians who still use A.D. instead of C.E. to the re-education camps, it’s a pretty silly thing to complain about.
Quite, and because we don’t want to render unto the Japanese Caesar, we don’t use his inscription and his likeness. But since the “Common Era” dates from the supposed birth of Christ, bless Dionysius Exiguus’s little cotton socks along with his shaky arithmetic, you might as well use the B.C. and A.D. notation that was rubbing along perfectly well until the diversity crowd got at it.
tomndebb’s strictly correct about using A.D. as a prefix, but there’s a classic comic this side the pond that would not agree with him.
Actually, the term “common era” (or “Christian era,” which I find equally acceptable, or “vulgar era”, which I hadn’t heard of until today but have taken a liking to) has been in use for nearly 300 years, originating with Christian writers.
Put me down as another one in the “B.C. and A.D.” crowd. All this tree-hugging bullshit about “BCE” and “CE” is clearly the work of backsliding reactionary Paper Weasels, and I’ll not have a bar of it.
I’m being serious, BTW. I’m not a religious chap, but I am a history buff, and “B.C.” and “A.D.” have worked perfectly well for centuries as place markers, and I’m not about to stop using them now just to keep the Diversity Commune happy.
I don’t know. Jesus is pretty cool to a lot of different people in different religions, including at least this Ganesh worshipper, who says, “Jesus, too is a form of God,” not to mention Atheists for Jesus. I don’t mind “CE”. I just read it as “Christian Era” anyway.
Sorry. I normally don’t care about things like this, and I’m not interested in forcing people to date things my way or whatever. But I’m not going to refer to ‘in the year of the lord’ all the time (I’m an ancient history graduate student, by the way, and BCE and CE have become standard in journals, and even acceptable in Christian-centred ones) since I don’t believe Jesus was the Lord. It’s not confusing. The dates are the same.
“Anno Domini” only means “in the year of the Lord”, not “my Lord” - if you want it to mean, in the privacy of your own head, “the inaccurately-determined year of the putative Lord of some whacked-out religion I think is nonsense”, who’s stopping you?
I guess I understand folks who are resistant to change. Look at it this way.
There are significant advantages, as information becomes more and more global, to having the whole world on the same date system. If you won’t even make the piffling little change from 2007 AD to 2007 CE, how the heck are we to expect others to both give up their H19s and 5678s, and ask them to adopt a system that gives a nod to someone else’s god as the one true god?
Given that we can’t even agree how to write the date in the Gregorian Calendar- those of us in the Commonwealth use the DD/MM/YY system, the Americans use the MM/DD/YY system, and there are also deviant and heretical versions with the year first (YY/MM/DD, YY/DD/MM)- I’m quite happy to continue with our current system where the Arabs think it’s 1428, the Japanese say it’s the 19th year of the Heisi era, and for many of the Eastern Orthodox churches it’s still the Tuesday before last.