The B.C./A.D. Calender

[9opiles]

I was sitting around one day and I realized...why does the calender based on one religious figure used all over the world, to calculate for the history of both everything before then, and after then? Other religions have their own calenders, so why does our society have to use theirs? The entire society, and all other societies, all birthdays, death days...are all on this one calender.

The calender, along with being a theological calender, is flawed.

My life is not relative to their religious figure, so wtf?

[Davin]

C.E. and B.C.E. stand for Current Era and Before Current Era.

[9opiles]

Having a common era / before common era distinction makes no difference as they are still based on the same distinction, that it was something of note in the first place.

[Davin]

Big whoop dee doo. Religion happened. There are some relics in our societies from it. Get over it.

[9opiles]

It wasn't implemented until 800 years or so afterwards. Not everyone thinks it actually happened, therefore having a society, and an entire world even, basing its civil and scientific endeavors on a theological calender is not something we should just accept as "it just happened." Just like there's an issue with "One nation under God" in the Pledge of Alliegance, also added later. It's a calender that is used to determine the dates of pre-BCE history...it's not a relic. `So no, I won't get over it.

[Smellyoldgit]

Much as I dislike the idea of a theo-illogical calendar, I can put up with it -and having multiple god-based dating systems is useful in understanding why muslims are 579 years more retarded than christians

[Davin]

9opiles wrote

It wasn't implemented until 800 years or so afterwards. Not everyone thinks it actually happened, therefore having a society, and an entire world even, basing its civil and scientific endeavors on a theological calender is not something we should just accept as "it just happened." Just like there's an issue with "One nation under God" in the Pledge of Alliegance, also added later. It's a calender that is used to determine the dates of pre-BCE history...it's not a relic. `So no, I won't get over it.

It's not like "under god" in the US Pledge of Allegiance, one is just a date system that happened to stick due largely in part to English colonialism, the other is a state sponsoring religion.

Then don't get over it, cry like a little baby about every little religious thing that religious people don't even give any fucks for. That's your choice to be a tedious cock. If you want to go around trying to wipe out anything that was even remotely inspired by some kind of religion, go ahead, but to convince adults, you're going to need better reasons than, "because it was religious, waaaaaah!"

[clambake]

Thursdays must really piss you off.

The BCE is a bit of retro 'splaining (dammit I cannot recall the trope name) to make BC less religiously dependent. Other than that I have found through my various readings of history from different disciplines (e.g. art, science, politics) that "1 CE" centers* on a decent point in human history to be accurately called the "Common Era". At the very least, close enough to not worry me so much about the original Christ-y origins.

[edited to add] * plus/minus about 300 years just to be clear.

[Saturday]

Davin wrote

C.E. and B.C.E. stand for Current Era and Before Current Era.

I'd actually never heard of "current" until now. I'd always been taught "common era" and "before common era". Is "current" popular?

clambake wrote

Thursdays must really piss you off.

Thursdays are the devil. There are better days of the week.

Davin wrote

If you want to go around trying to wipe out anything that was even remotely inspired by some kind of religion, go ahead, but to convince adults, you're going to need better reasons than, "because it was religious, waaaaaah!"

In addition, like I said in some other thread recently. I also think it would be a mistake to eradicate all things related to religion. Some of those things are too beneficial to society for religion alone to have and die with.

I hope 9opiles recognizes that we shouldn't burn down the Sistine Chapel along with Michelangelo's work.

[Davin]

Saturday wrote

I'd actually never heard of "current" until now. I'd always been taught "common era" and "before common era". Is "current" popular?

I was wrong, it's "Common Era" not "Current Era."

[Saturday]

I think there may be a point to be made here. I was thinking that every time I hear "BCE" or "BC" or "BC" and "AD", I think of Jesus in the back of my mind because that's the time for which the eras are set around. Now this is an example of the ingenuity of Christianity in brainwashing people, making sure God is in every aspect of people's lives.

While at this point I don't really care about the eras myself because they will be probably be arbitrary whatever they are set at, perhaps we should use this system to instill something more valuable than a history lesson, at best, on when a particular religion made up a story.

Perhaps we can structure a date system around a date we really want people to remember for the rest of civilization.

Perhaps we should start the current era at the first atomic test from the Manhattan Project so that every child in elementary school is taught and remembers both the destructive and constructive dichotomies of scientific knowledge. Or perhaps it should be set on the date we first sent man into space, or one of the dates when important thinkers realized the heliocentric model, or maybe at the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event which destroyed the dominant species of the time (dinosaurs) allowing the later rise of mammals and eventually humans. If that had never happened, we wouldn't be here.

Or maybe in the future, we'll one day know the precise date on which abiogenesis occurred and life started on this planet. That would be a cool date to set eras around. Or maybe we'll have a pretty solid date on when the universe began. Maybe we'll set our calendars around the date we make first contact and realize we're not alone. That last one would probably be my favorite.

[PanAtheist]

With BC/ AD what we have is an arbitrary date - and arbitrary year - to count forwards and backwards from. And it can't be an other way! The joke is on the religious here! If "God" wasn't just a nonsense-word, and there was in actual fact an impossibly-talented bodiless creator who created the world by magically conceiving it and magically wishing it so, then we'd all be counting from an actual beginning. Instead we have an arbitrary date, and always will. Hurray for reality! The joke really is on the religious!

[9opiles]

The Mayan Calender is a superior calender. All that's different with it is it has the days and months divided differently. With the current calender, there is an extra year floating about, as there is no year zero. Mayans accounted for this, and their calender still works.

Yes Davin, I think when it comes to some things, there will be a time when things will change; and when it comes to things like calenders, just like Judaism and Islam have their own calenders and systems, even the Chinese have their own calender, I don't see why the entire world needs to operate under a theological calender on christianity.

After some furthur consideration, I think a secular calender derived from the Mayan calender would be a better thing from which to derive, if we accept the date from which their first Baktun starts, which is in 3114 B.C.E. Some date long before that.

And would it be wrong to want to synchonize it with some astrological event instead? No matter who you are, or what religion you're in, doesn't change the planets, the stars, or the moon.

That would seem more feasible.

So yes, I am tired of religious tyranny. Things that apply to everyone should be, by and large, secular. Wanting that for people makes me an asshole?

[clambake]

You're thinking about it the wrong way. Think of the BCE/CE calendar as a permanent and pervasive record of the epic failure of Christianity. Since it's literally impossible for JC to have been born in year 1 it magnifies the fact it's complete retconned* bullshit.

Besides, considering the likelihood of enough people giving a shit combined with the ridiculous effort it would take to make such a change, it's just not worth bothering.


* that's the word I was trying to remember!

[Davin]

9opiles wrote

So yes, I am tired of religious tyranny. Things that apply to everyone should be, by and large, secular. Wanting that for people makes me an asshole?

I have a few questions:

1. How is it "tyranny" for the calendar?
2. When did I say that you were an asshole?

By and large, I'm mostly just calling you a drama queen who found out that the most widely used calendar sets its beginning year sometime around when a Jesus Christ figure supposedly was born. But you also ignore the days of the week which are named after Norse gods, and the month names which are named after Roman gods. I don't consider that a "Christian" calendar, rather a calendar that has cultural artifacts which matches several definitions of "secular".

Secular

a : of or relating to the worldly or temporal <secular concerns>
b : not overtly or specifically religious <secular music>
c : not ecclesiastical or clerical <secular courts> <secular landowners>
2
: not bound by monastic vows or rules; specifically : of, relating to, or forming clergy not belonging to a religious order or congregation <a secular priest>

3
a : occurring once in an age or a century
b : existing or continuing through ages or centuries
c : of or relating to a long term of indefinite duration <secular inflation>

Then of course there's the problem of accuracy with the Mayan calendar using 360 days (or tuns), to represent a year, since (and I hope you know this), a solar year is about 365.24 days. It seems to me that being 5.24 days off per year would cause some problems with seasonal shifting. But I guess the problem would solve itself be resetting about every 72 years.