I just heard about this controversy, people wanting to rename BC (Before Christ) to BCE (Before Common Era) and AD (Anno Domini – (in the) year of the lord) to CE (Common Era)….
Is this really something worth worrying about or worse, spending money on? Does it really matter at all? I think it lost any religious significance a long time ago and don’t see a need to worry about assigning official secular names. In fact, I doubt many people could even tell you what BC and AD stand for; go ask 10 people and post the results – make sure some of the people are under 30, I am curious. About the only thing it seems to be accomplishing is riling up the right wing.
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It’s the controversy du jour. When I was growing up, it was BC and AD everywhere, but on the History and Discovery Channels–where I get most of my history these days–it’s BCE and CE. Really, who cares?
I like to keep things simple and if they both mean the same thing (which they do), the basic requirement for clear communication has been met and no one is confused. Except, that is, for those who don’t know and don’t care–almost everyone under 30. 🙂
Good luck getting such loaded terms as “Before Christ” and “Anno Domini” adopted by Arab-speaking (and therefore, mostly Muslim) countries. And yet, all the dates that computers work on are based on this exact range.
However, if you say “well, those dates are already in common use, but historical data indicates that they don’t _actually_ match with anything related to Christ, so we’ll just refer to them with a different name”, and you can sell to the whole world, without concern that they might get offended over your apparent ties to a single religion.
Yes, it’s worth doing – certainly more worth doing than trying to distinguish between GMT and UTC.
Just another sign of the decay of the “west”. Let’s just replace every historical term. Wonder how many people have indicated they are offended? Seems to me the change is being made by people who are afraid of offending others but with nothing to substantiate that “offense”. And as for latin, it’s a dead language so why not bury it.
Of course, many nations have their own calendar that is not the Gregorian calendar and does not have Year 1 starting with the birth of Jesus. Can’t say I’m offended by that when I visit them, I just have to figure out what year it is, so what?
(Forget Greenwich as well, where’s that? Another historical anachronism that people are too lazy to recall? lol).
Kill multiculturism – forget history, start afresh with a new world order (and make the same mistakes all over again). What a wimpy world we live in, so sad.
If you dont like this calendar, make up your own! Use a jewish calendar! This ones working perfectly, so why use ce and bce?
THIS IS NOT A BIG DEAL. I MYSELF AM A CHRISTIAN, AND REALLY DONT CARE. THE CHURCH IS MAKING A BIG DEAL OUT IF THIS. ATHEISTS ARE MAKING A BIG DEAL OUT OF THIS. is the cash really worth spending to change textbooks?
i like bc and ad. This is yet another attempt for the dagon atheists to remove christan influence from the planet.
And one more thing. if religous influence must be removed from something as insignificant as a calendar, why not change the days of the week (named after norse gods) and the months of the year(named after roman gods) while your at it?
There’s a big difference bewteen days and months named after Norse or Roman gods and a calendar based on Christ. There are not large groups, cultures, civilizations who feel their beliefs and traditions are being undermined or given less respect than thos of followers of Norse or Roman gods – as everybody is clearly aware.
It is not a movement on the part of athiests, but those who feel the world of today must become inclusive, that all cultures and religions must work together to combat extremism by encouraging peace, dialogue, cooperation as we enter a new century. Of course it’s easy for Christians (and I’m one) to say “it’s no big deal to me”, but do think about how you’d feel if this refered to Mohamed or Allah instead?
It’s one thing being laid back and comfortable with BC, calling others “politically correct” – but we’re the ones who can’t deal with “French” fries when France disagrees with us in a democratic debate?
BC/AD versus BCE/CE
Suggesting that the references BC-AD “Before Christ†and “Anno Domini†in Christian calendar be changed, is and ought to be offensive to Christians. It is one thing to be offended by the use of the Christian calendar and quite another to suggest changing its’ name or the reference BC-AD.
No one is asking Hindus, Moslems, or Jews etc. to rename or change references in their calendars so as not to offend anyone. (E.g., AH or AM to CE) To suggest that they do so would clearly be offensive even if these calendars were adopted by others.
Those who are offended by the use of the Christian calendar are clearly free to use or advocate for the use of any other calendar or to develop one more to their liking. If this is inconvenient, then continue to use the Christian calendar, but use it as is.
I used to dislike the BC/AD notation until I started searching a document for 138AD or as the author had idiotically put 138CE. Unfortunately the copy was quite bad it is was almost impossible to tell 138CE from 13BCE.
It is like having roadwork signs:
A) You must not stop
b) You must now stop
The two are so easily confused that they will lead to accidents just as 13BCE is far too similar to 138CE. Also I had a massive page of dates, guess which numbers spilled off the end because there were redundant letters BCE of course!!!
Anyone with any intelligence designing a date suffix would have had the same number of letters for AD/BC and would certainly not have two letter combinations which differ only by a very easily confused number/letter.
And add to that my own experience of confusing 13 with B means that in handwriting 2213CE could easily be read as 22BCE. That is not possible with BC/AD because we know the last two characters are the suffix and everyone knows there is a problem if you read 22BAD instead of 2213AD.
The plain simple fact is that BCE CE notation is plain daft and no one in their right mind would adopt it because it is so prone to errors.
Just to add to the debate the actual date of the birth of Christ (an historical figure meaning “annointed” not the messiah otherwise we’d be dating BM not BC) was in 4AD.
1AD was the date of the introduction of the current pattern of leap years which has continued with only minor hitches up until this day.
Before 1AD there was effectively no calendar, and so
BC ==== BEFORE CALENDAR.
In effect you can say with absolute confidence that no one in the world had the day/month, nor the year which we ascribe to them today. BC literally was “Before calendar” with the first year of the modern calendar with our current leap year pattern being 1AD (After Dates?)
More accurately the birth of Jesus is unknown. But whilst on the point, both Jew and Gentile alike called him Christ, a Greek word meaning “annointed” or even “appointed”. If the greek word “Christ” was so abhorent to Hebrew speaking Jews, what on earth do they call Christians?
I don’t believe anyone in the world adopts a “PC” word for Christians. This Christ or Christos as the Romans called him was an historical figure. Christ is a name, just as caesar was a name.
SO LETS JUST START A WHOLE NEW PC CALENDAR
A new PC calendar based on some arbitrary date …. like the first use of PC (August 1, 1970) in Toni Cade’s The Black Woman:
“A man cannot be politically correct and a chauvinist too.”
And obviously solar years are pandering to new age Stonehenge worshipping hippies, so lets get rid of years althogher and have the number of days. Before the date will be BPC, and after the date will be APC**. Which would make it 14172 APC.
Sorry, forgot, clearly a decimal system is discriminatory against those who have lost fingers, so perhaps we should just use binary instead:
11011101011100APC
But of course, APC and BPC are far too easy to confuse, so lets just go back to PC/CE (Political Corrent/Common Error)