"You say BC!" Topic

You were asked – TMP link

BC or BCE? WHich do you use?

74% said "BC"
14% said "both"
8% said "BCE"

Oh, good. I am not the only one.

And I use AD not CE.

Away with this Woke rubbish! Away, I say!

+1 John.

And Pluto is still a planet, so there!

I'm an Emilianist and our current year should be 12026 HE, but until we adopt the Holocene Era system and stop irrationally dating the majority of human history with negative numbers, I'm sticking with BC and AD. This "common era" nonsense is just word policing. It's better to state the origin and context of our ridiculous dating system right up front.

We are in the Second Year of the Second Reign of Donaldus Magnus.
So, not 2026 AD. Just Year 2.

We can also date from the Declaration of Independence.
So, this is 250 ADoI.

Brits can date from Charles III, or even Hastings.
French from the Tennis Court Oath.

B.C. and A.D.!

We are a bunch of curmudgeons, but I like it!

BCE/CE, standard usage at Harvard Divinity School (multi-religious) and also Harvard Classics Dept. Been in use by Jewish scholars since the 18th century. I've done lots of interfaith work, BC/AD is mostly used by the folks who went to Bible Colleges.

Am also partial to VE (Vulgar Era, coined by Johannes Kepler), but CE overtook that one.

BCE/CE. It's Science!

As long as people know what you mean, does it really matter?

I do not understand this obsession we have with minutia when the general consensus view is so obvious.

MY BLOG:
Just Add Water Miniature Painting and Wargaming Blog:
justaddwater-bedford.blogspot.com

Aethling,
"As long as people know what you mean, does it really matter?"

Most people don't know what the jewish ones mean. Even I get confused. Remember, TMP attracts members from around the world, most of whom are not jewish and have never heard of the woke sort. They're not used in British or Commonwealth academia, books or schools.

So absolutely it matters. In every walk of life we are being cut off from our culture and heritage. Our history is being erased or altered. The A.D./B.C. markers remind us of our history, culture and ancestry. The other sort, which incidentally never took off outside of America, were introduced to academia by Jewish academics from Columbia University. As far as I can work out, the BCE/CE thing is simply Christophobic. Nonsense at best; designed to cut us off from our past at worse. They remind us of nothing, add nothing to our lives and bring a culture of shallowness and corporatism.

The idea "B.C." is offensive is clearly nonsense. Christians aren't offended by our pagan days of the week and months. Men should stand up for our inheritance. Otherwise we'll lose it.

Good point about the days of the week. As a Christian it doesn't phase me that most of days of the week are in celebration of the Norse Gods and most of the months are named after Greek and Roman gods or pagan emperors.

Cacadoress

I disagree. I use both intermittently.

The problem Atheling is that the changes have an ideological agenda behind them. They are not innocent as your first post seems to suggest.

In the same way that religion can function as an ideology?

Consider this my last sentence on the subject.

At least then we could have a real conversation about competing ideologies instead of one masquerading as something neutral or ideologically pure.

BCE/CE. It's Science!

Science is a work in progress. Political Correctness is not.

Wolfhag

Marcus Brutus
"At least then we could have a real conversation about competing ideologies instead of one masquerading as something neutral or ideologically pure"

Top comment.

Since most of the world today & all of the world pre-1CE is not christian, is it a tad arrogant to continue to use BC & AD when the easier alternatives of BCE & CE include everyone today, not just a small portion of humanity?

Jae Nopatronymic
"Since most of the world today & all of the world pre-1CE is not christian",

Personal comment.
Why stoop to turn a civilised discussion personal? It simply wasn't necessary.

Cultural attack
One may ask, 'isn't it a tad arrogant' to target for severance all links to our culture and history that give our lives meaning?

Illogic
One may ask, why pretend BCE & CE are "easier alternatives" when they contain more letters? Silly.

Political intersectional bias.
One may ask, when did cultural references have to "include everyone today?" It's a dating system, not a cum-by-yar tambourine clapping session. Moreover, taking your point in good faith (which is hard after you started with an egregious insult), the vast majority of the English-speaking world use it. Why should a small American minority of the world's 15.7 million Jews get to dictate how the world's 2.5 billion Christians and cultural Christians describe their history?

Cultural bias.
How does a dating system specifically designed by east-coast American Jews to attack Christianity, "include everyone"? Every manifestation of culture is exclusionary, by its very nature. However, everyone is welcome to partake of them. And a guest should learn the host's habits, not ride rough-shod over them.

Lack of tolerance.
Always amazing to see the very people who say Christians, Europeans or Westerners should be "tolerant" of things that they find mildly bothersome, being the same people who are bent on shutting down all and any manifestations of Christianty, European culture and Western heroes.

Hypocrisy.
Have you called for references to Islam in culturally Islamic countries, Buddhism in culturally Buddhist countries, jewdaism in Israel and Hinduism in India to be eliminated so as to "include everyone"?

Pretence.
Who are these people who are not "included" when we refuse to add a random third letter to our ancient dates, or use the third and fifth letter of the alphabet for modern dates instead of the first and fourth? Can we have their names?
Because if they were people, they'd be the most biased, reactionary, prejudiced and unpleasantly exclusionary people you would wish to meet, wouldn't they? No, these people are figments of your imagination. So why do you have negative figments populating your spirit? What do we traditionally call such entities controlling a person's mind?

Be under no illusion, we are under attack: our history, our ethnicity, our culture and our religion is being chipped away on every front. And as cultural Westerners, bought up with the Christian ethics that are the foundation of civilisation, we feel the impulse to compromise; to give up a hero here, a bit of history there, a word here, a tradition here, a Christian reference there….. until one day we'll wake up and all the links to our ancestry and forefathers that give our life meaning will be gone. Erased. Scrubbed. And why do they want this? Because the liberal, Rousseauan mindset doesn't deduce anything from the past. The indulgent live-in-the-moment, homicidally-empathetic paradigm is mainly destructive, resting on two non-a priori shibboleths rather than facts: that we were born in goodness and purity with innate knowledge and that we are all the same. From this come the two pillars of the liberal religion: that we are "progressing" towards a Utopia, where there are no individual differences, there is no crime because there is no wealth to make people resentful and everyone loves everyone in a benign Logan's Run universe. In this dystopia, there is no history, nothing can be "sinful", culture is replaced by consumerism and heroes can only try to escape. But will be prevented.

In the face of the unknown, listen to your ancestors voices. – Thrasymachus of Chalcedon.

Since most of the world today & all of the world pre-1CE is not christian, is it a tad arrogant to continue to use BC & AD when the easier alternatives of BCE & CE include everyone today, not just a small portion of humanity?

It is the Christian civilization that gave us the near universal dating that is currently in use. The very reason for dividing world dating in to two parts is predicated on the birth of Jesus Christ. Pretending that this is not true by substituting BCE for BC and CE for AD seems like historical malpractice to me.

But how do you respond to the point made above that all dating systems are an accumulation of historical details. Most of days of the week are named after Norse Gods and most of the months are named after Greek and Roman gods or pagan emperors. Should we be changing the names of the days and months too?

Personal comment.
Cultural attack
Political intersectional bias.
Egregious insult
Cultural bias.
Lack of tolerance.
Hypocrisy.

Hmm

Jae,

Thank you. We're passing down our cultural inheritance to the next generation.

You're passing down nothing.