If we did not use the BCE & CE -- was: BC & AD -- designations, what year & century would we really be in?!

No idea...i still go by BC and AD.

From what I remember, B.C. ( before Christ, correct me if I'm wrong ) is just like a century, 100BC is 100years.
A.D. is Anno Domini ( correct me again if I'm wrong. )

For those of you who do not know, and I should have posted it in my original post...BCE means "Before Common Era" & CE means "Common Era"; we no longer use BC & AD, as that offended the non-christian religions -- I myself am Athiest so yes in a way it offended me by using BC & AD.

We would be in the year Infinite... or also known as no time at all... same as inventions that show up all the time like the Automobile... where will the world be today if no one had thought of the automobile? Same concept.

yeah I agree with that.. BCE & CE but it will take time before the others would get used to it.

So in the BCE/CE system 2007 would be ?

Same thing as CS/AD.

But, we'd be in around.... The year 4.5 billion?

Although, we've always had 'eras' to go by. When one era went, another began - for example, emperors or family rulings.

2007...

The calendar is really an arbitrary agreement on how to designate specific dates. So there's no such thing as a "real date". The only real thing is the calculation of the time between specific events.

Here's an example of how arbitrary our calendar is:
When they first came out with the BC/AD calendar, they didn't calculate leap years correctly. This meant that the date moved more and more out of sync with the earth's orbit (it takes the earth 365 and 1/4 days to go around the sun). Things started to get really out of wack in terms of what month do you plant crops, when is Christmas, etc. So in 1582 Pope Gregory XIII and his astronomers and mathematicians changed the calendar. The day after October 4 was October 15. Roman Catholic countries adopted it immediately but Protestant countries didn't adopt it until the eighteenth century. So the correct date depended on your religion and which country you were in. BTW, when they announced that the day after 10/4 was going to be 10/15, there were massive riots because people thought they were getting ripped off for 9 days of wages!

The ancient Mayans created a calendar that was correct (ie- didn't go out of sync with the earth's orbit) for something like 10,000 years.
The Jewish calendar is also much more accurate than ours. By the Jewish calendar it's currently Tevet 5768 (Tevet being the month).

you are serious? Offended by using something that has been around before you were born? Offended by using something you have used since before you knew you were an Athiest? Offended by using something that a lot of people don't even know the meaning of.

and you Legatus....."the others" seriously?

Athiests are the most easily offended whiney babies of all the religions...."oh nooooo the whole world has to change what they say on a daily basis because in so offeeeennnded" "oh nooooo can't pray in schhoooooll bacause i have nothing to praaaaaay to, it offends me" Look I called it a religion.....are you offended???
I am not bashing Athiests. I have QUITE a few Athiest friends some of them whine about crap and the other ones roll their eyes and work on worthwhile issues.

i am never using BCE and CE because since birth I have used BC and AD. and neither will my kids and the future if that issue is going to be ugly

using BCE & CE doesn't mean that you're an atheist.
and on my side. it's much proper to use BCE & CE than BC & AD. I know that when you're in a country which a population is mainly made of Christians, your are trained to use BC & AD. I'm a Catholic and proud of it.

I think that changing it is improper. B.C. didn't do anything to anyone. and A.D. sounds cool. I am really scared that we are walking into a very impersonal future. We should be offended it keeps our ego's down.
I don't understand why everything has to change. I just want some consistancy in life but can't get it....not even BC and AD which they have always been.

Hon, changes isn't avoidable, we have to live with it. but if you and your family would like to use BC & AD there's no one would hold you back, there's only one thing that is constant and will always remain constant and that would be change.

thanks "hon"

sorry,, but that's my way to calm things down. .. xD

it's cool. now back to the origional question.

We don't know what year it actually is because we don't diffinitively know what year the world was created and/or naturally formed. However people have their side of that issue and will vehemently defend it. but all in all.....we don't know....

Actually it was changed so that it would be more appropriate to suit other religious groups because it has been adopted world wide.

You wouldn't actually know, unless there was some other method of referencing the epoch.

Same designation as the BC/AD system.

2007 AD = 2007 CE.

Yay (sarcasm) we are switching our dating system to One World dating system. Do you know what they will call the One World Currency, and One World religion. this sucks. we need to not be one world anything....but it was already prophesied huh...

Actually, the designations BC, AD, BCE, and CE are used not to describe a period of years, but the epoch in which the year is counted, measured from the point established for the era's origin.

The Christian Era, Anno Domini ("year of our lord", or AD) was established to be the epoch beginning with the established time of the birth of Christ. Any year forward from that point is designated as ***X AD, and anything before that time is ***X BC. Thus, we are currently in the 2007th year since that established time. Today, we call it the Common Era or CE, in deference to what's already been pointed out.

100 BC, therefore would be the designation not of a century, but a year, 100 years before the beginning of the Christian era, or 2107 years ago.

Mmm our calander is actually 4 years out. Its really 2011 according to some sources.

Might you elaborate on that, because if that's true, then next year is 2012. "Now let's get this topic started, right? Let's get this topic started quickly!"

Time is an illusion ... it doesn't really exist.

Time does exist, but it's just a spatial dimension like height or length. Our perception of time as being anything other than that is an illusion.

This seems appropriate to me. Why should people of other religions have to write "year of our Lord" every time they want to reference the international calendar? If you want to write "A.D." and specifically reference the Christian calendar, go ahead and do it.

I'm glad they changed to BCE/CE. Ramming your religious beliefs down someone else's throat is rude.

You can also say it another way that BC and AD is the correct way as saying BCE offens me because I am a Christian. What I am saying is Its just words so they really shouldn't offend anyone. A word is only a word and be mature about it.

BC and AD are just designations that are hardly ever used. How could it possibly be offensive? When you put a date on something, you don't write December 13, 2007 AD. It's ridiculous that people feel the need to make an issue about something that has absolutely nothing to do with their day to day lives.

And if I was atheist, I might be more offended by the fact that they changed the designations to appease me, but the actual year, which is based on the alleged death of Jesus Christ, is still the same.

Certianly. I rememebr being taught at school (that was about 10 years ago) that the calculations done when the calander originally started in 0bc were out by 4 years. I think it was the Romans fault.

I seem to remember being told that the Arab calaneder which is differant from ours disputes the current date by 4 years. To them we are indeed about to start 2012 although goodness knows what number that equates to in theirs.

So has anyone that has read revalation concerned about this at all?

It's not as if the BC/AD scale was used in the events it invokes; it was created by a monk centuries after Christ and didn't take off until centuries after /that/. Until the Early Middle Ages, many people used a time scale AUC -- ab urbe condita, [in the year after] the Founding of the City of Rome from BCE 753; they also used the date of the first Olympic Games in 776 BCE as a starting place for a calendar. More often than those, people would use the number of years the local monarch was on the throne.

And this excludes the Chinese, the Jews and the Muslims who all have their own calendar outside the use of the BC/AD -- so it's not as if there's some permanency and inherent worth in the old scale.

--Jaylemurph

Good post.

I can't understand why people who are offended by the new method don't just use the old method. To each his own. I'm not a Christian and I find having the Judeo-Christian religious system forced upon me in secular situations to be offensive.



Brothers, how would you feel about tacking the phrase "In the Year of Our Prophet Mohammed" or "After the Birth of Our Lord Zoroaster" after every calendar reference you made? According to you they are just words so they shouldn't offend you. Maybe we should have created an international calendar based on some astronomical event.

Someone mentioned that we are moving towards an impersonal future. I think that many things gain by being personal and having tradition but international counting systems aren't in that category. Anyone who says that religious references in the calendar shouldn't matter should be as willing to use BZ, before Zeus, as BC, Before Christ.

Good idea.

I also like the idea of BF and AF standing for "Before Ford" and "After Ford" as is found in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. It represents the time before and after Henry Ford's mass production techniques and distinguishes between the two eras.

jaylemurph mentioned the date 776 BCE (date of the first Olympic Games) as a starting point. That was an international event, so that sounds like a good idea.

To me insisting on the usage of AD is equivalent to a two year old saying, "That lady's not Mommy. MY mother is Mommy". We need to grow up and realize that everyone doesn't think like we do.

--------------------

(edit) Maybe we should start thinking in terms of "StarDate ___". Star Trek had the right idea.

I find, very often, that when people complain about something like this (or when people complain about "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas") that what it really says
is not "the Other is co-opting my way" as much as it is a complaint that "my way has not yet fully co-opted the Other's".

I'm not, by the way, necessarily suggesting the ravergirl was doing this.

--Jaylemurph

Agreed.

Aggh... why don't we all just use the unix time convension

I was born around 515988000

if you would like a little bit more of a read on the topic, and it covers significantly more than what was even sugjested here.

http://cura.free.fr/xx/17sepp1.html

some history of what why and counting in other forms of calender.

I've yet to meet one of these supposed offended non christians....I hear a lot about them and always from presumptious government liberals.

I am muslim and I am more than happy to continue using BC and AD

that would make it hard to remember birth dates.

Sorry to necropost, but I have to say this debate over BCE/CE and BC/AD is possibly one of the most idiotic things I've ever seen.

The CE system is still based on inherently Christian dates, so no matter how much you want to get your panties in a knot over the name you're still observing something that was founded as a Christian invention.

I'm agnostic but using BCE/CE is just too damn pedantic for me and I have no problems dealing with BC/AD.

Frankly anybody who has enough of a stick up their ass that they feel the need to correct someone over it for seemingly arbitrary reasons needs to be shot.

For me, its 164 BE, for Islamic regions its 1428 AH.

First off I want to state that I am an Athiest. This type of statement is the reason why I hate most other Athiests. We are not a religion, we have no rights to say anything negative about Christ, God, Buddha, Allah (sp?), or any other deity. Why should the fact that other people believe offend us in any way?

The fact of this matter is that if you are offended by anothers beliefs, then you believe. Making you a non-Athiest, maybe not a christian but not an Athiest. I have no beliefs and I could care less about what others say and believe.

On a side note, I do believe Jesus Christ was a real person, not the son of god, but a real man who changed history more than any other person. So the BC designation is a valid and accurate description of the time before Jesus Christ was born.