BC/AD Vs. BCE/CE

Mal-Adjusted

i know some acedemic books insist on using this "new" dating system for callenders in an attempt to remove the BC/AD from modern vernacular. i don't really know how ling this is going on. i learnt it from a 10 page debate on the IMDb fron the film 10,000 BC. i was just wondering what others thought about it?

P.S. i don't really know which to post this thread under, christianity or A&A, please consider this thread open to anyone who wants to add something. thany you!:D

Mena

I had to google it (BCE/CE) to find out what it was

As an atheist, I don't really care either way frankly. BCE/CE just, to me, seems like more PC nonsense.

Fanny Cradock

If this gets popularised (something I doubt) then I'll insist that they rename the days and months of the year also. I'll be damned if I'm calling it Thors-day ay longer.

It might have some uses in academic circles (though one would imagine that they should be smart enough to work out the difference), but other than that I can't see much reason for it.

PDN

I understand the use of "Before Common Era" and "Common Era" was mainly a Jewish convention for those who objected to AD as referring to 'our Lord'. It is becoming increasingly popular as a PC thing.

marco_polo

This is PC nonsense of the highest order.

It must take a monumental effort for some people to get offended by something like this IMO.

robindch

I'm sure there must be a few over-sensitive souls who get offended by "AD", a Latin abbreviation which seems to be almost entirely unsed these days. FWIW, I've always suspected there were far more people who simply enjoyed winding up over-sensitive christians by using "CE" instead.

.

marco_polo

robindch wrote: »

I'm sure there must be a few over-sensitive souls who get offended by "AD", a Latin abbreviation which seems to be almost entirely unsed these days. FWIW, I've always suspected there were far more people who simply enjoyed winding up over-sensitive christians by using "CE" instead.

.

The only place I have seen it used is wikipedia and I will hazzard a guess that it is mainly to anatgonise the conservapedia (yes it is a real site ) rednecks

PDN

marco_polo wrote: »

The only place I have seen it used is wikipedia and I will hazzard a guess that it is mainly to anatgonise the conservapedia (yes it is a real site ) rednecks

Truth is stranger than fiction. Apparently the whole CE thing was one of the major reasons for Conservapedia being founded.

BTW, is someone who loves wikipedia a wikipediaphile?

AtomicHorror

marco_polo wrote: »

The only place I have seen it used is wikipedia and I will hazzard a guess that it is mainly to anatgonise the conservapedia (yes it is a real site ) rednecks

Ah Conservapedia. If the consensus of human knowledge is strange and scary to you, just create an alternate reality within which everything you believe in is correct.

I particularly like this article:

http://www.conservapedia.com/Homosexual_agenda

Watch out folks, they've got an evil plan to make you tolerate stuff.

marco_polo

AtomicHorror wrote: »

Ah Conservapedia. If the consensus of human knowledge is strange and scary to you, just create an alternate reality within which everything you believe in is correct.

I particularly like this article:

http://www.conservapedia.com/Homosexual_agenda

Watch out folks, they've got an evil plan to make you tolerate stuff.

This one is a ditty as well. Selected quotes below.

http://www.conservapedia.com/Barack_Obama

Barack Hussein Obama, II (born, allegedly :eek: in Honolulu,[1][2] August 4, 1961)

.........

Obama almost always reads from prepared text on a teleprompter and rarely allows tough questions. Indeed, when unable to read from prepared text he often fails miserably at articulating his positions and is caught tripping over his own feet, as displayed in the Saddleback Forum. The first McCain-Obama debate was held in Mississippi on September 26 and, without a teleprompter, Obama stumbled further. The second McCain-Obama debate was held on October 7, and had a Town Hall format.

...........

Obama and Islam

Obama is likely to be Muslim because:

* Obama's background and education are Muslim.
* Obama's middle name remains Muslim, which most Christians would not retain.
* Obama recently referred to his "Muslim faith"
* Obama uses the Muslim Pakistani pronunciation for "Pakistan" rather than the common American one.
* Obama has viewed the Muslim Malcolm X as his favorite black leader.
* Obama's claims of conversion to Christianity arose after he became politically ambitious, lacking a date of conversion or baptism.

etc, etc, etc.

* Disclaimer - Posting this stuff is not any way having a dig at normal christian people in real countries. The whole US / Evangelical / Confederate / Fox news / Republican mentality of a rather large minority of the population does rather amuse and scare me.

Since I seem to have dragged this thread off topic I will make a feeble attempt to get it back on the rails by posting the official conservapedia position on BCE/CE.

http://www.conservapedia.com/CE
http://www.conservapedia.com/BCE

philologos

We all know what events they are intended to mark, so I don't see why we need to use BCE / CE at all.

robindch

marco_polo wrote: »

The only place I have seen it used is wikipedia and I will hazzard a guess that it is mainly to anatgonise the conservapedia (yes it is a real site ) rednecks

Yes, bizarrely, that seems to be quite true.

Unfortunately, they kept on reverting my article on gravity in which I said it was clearly an ungodly theory thought up of by the worldwide, atheist materialist conspiracy since nobody had every actually seen gravity and the fossil record had no evidence that gravity had existed in the past.

Personally, I think they were just scared of the Truth.

robindch

AtomicHorror wrote: »

Ah Conservapedia. If the consensus of human knowledge is strange and scary to you, just create an alternate reality within which everything you believe in is correct.

Weird isn't it -- fundamentalist religion can't withstand the secularizing effects of a good education, so its adherents homeschool and create their own parallel "university" system with religious analogs of accreditation boards, faculty members, buildings, degrees, doctorates, the works, handing around advanced degrees to anybody who'll pay up, like the educational confetti they feel their allegiance, if not their education, deserves. It's cargoculting in a very real sense.

Still, at lease conservapedia (why not "conservapaedia"?) helps to keep all the rednecks together in one place. Makes it easier to keep an eye on them all from my atheistic underground bunker.(*)

(*) retires to stroke my white cat for the afternoon.

Fanny Cradock

robindch wrote: »

create their own parallel "university" system with religious analogs of accreditation boards, faculty members, buildings, degrees, doctorates, the works, handing around advanced degrees to anybody who'll pay up.

So not to dissimilar to a normal college education?

Galvasean

I'm too stuck in my ways to change now! :P

Aint updatin' the titles of all those cave man/dino movies.

kelly1

B/CE = Before/Christian Era. Problem solved.

robindch

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

So not to dissimilar to a normal college education?

Well, along with intellectual endeavor, many mainstream universities certainly do demand payment of some kind. The religious ones, on the other hand, seem to be happy with just the latter.

AtomicHorror

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

So not to dissimilar to a normal college education?

With the minor requirement that one discard any and all inconvenient information as simply being part of some conspiracy to something something.

nouveau_4.0

BCE/CE is bollox. Too ambiguous. Bio-chemical Engineering vs Chemical Engineering.

Same thing!

Biro

nouveau_4.0 wrote: »

BCE/CE is bollox. Too ambiguous. Bio-chemical Engineering vs Chemical Engineering.

Same thing!

I dunno... there'll be a lot of Biologists very pssed off about this!

AtomicHorror

Biro wrote: »

I dunno... there'll be a lot of Biologists very pssed off about this!

Meh. We change out minds of what fields are called so often that we really don't have the right to be annoyed :pac:

Shinji Ikari

I've been an atheist for a long time but I refuse to use B.C.E./C.E.
I hate the P.C. police and B.C and A.D. is just more classical anyway.