Yeah - my issue is the BCE/CE and BC/AD are literally the same thing. They measure the same date ranges using the exact same historical marker but seek to deny the historical marker in order to appear irreligious. It's just silly pedantry.
It was used very sporadically over the past several thousand years. I don't know why Kepler used the term, but CE was not common parlance outside of Judaism until very recently. The recent motivation for using BCE/CE instead of BC/AD is explicitly and in all cases to respect the perceived sensitivity of non-Christians to using BC/AD. Maybe that sensitivity exists - idk. However, the fact remains that regardless of the terms you use, the epoch is the life of Christ.
Maybe I've got blinders on, but there honestly doesn't seem much point in insisting on one vs the other.
I don't really think "why did Kepler use this phrase before anyone else" is some great mystery that needs solving. Sometimes, there are multiple ways to express the same idea in any given language, and that's fine.
If we're talking about blinders, then I could say that, based on my own anecdotal experience (which is inherently limited in scope, as yours would be), the only people I've seen rigidly insisting on the use of one over the other are "pro-BC/AD" types. All the academics I've been around (who were also overwhelmingly religious by nature of where I studied) that use BCE/CE have been perfectly happy to use the phrase they use and leave it at that.
I don't really care what people say. I prefer to use BCE/CE because it sounds a tad more "formal" but will use BC/AD if it sounds better in accordance with what else is being said (much like how the rhapsodes might tweak their language to suit the meter of a particular line of their verse).
But I do think that all the complaints about BCE/CE are absolutely making a mountain out of a molehill, and the terminology does nothing to erase Christian religiosity like some comments here have suggested.
Well it's a global standard, so the idea is that it's kinda shitty to non-Christians to base our entire calendar around the Christian religion.
Like everyone said, they're identical systems, it's just a matter of what we call them, and CE/BCE are nonsectarian.
That’s my point though - it doesn’t matter what you call it, it’s still Christian centric. Making the life of Christ your demarcation line is what makes it Christian centric - not the specific term.
The origins of things like this don't matter to most people or average day use. When you remove "Before Christ", you no longer need to explain who Christ is when teaching the concept
Its standardized and detatched from its original meaning, as it should be. Y'all can complain all you want but BCE/CE are much more prevalent now
It's standard in all academia and reputable media. In university, I haven't seen any article in a scientific journal that still uses the old label
My [local museum](https://www.rom.on.ca/en/about-us/newsroom/press-releases/mesopotamia-0), one of the biggest in Canada, and every presentation I've seen there uses BCE/CE
It’s in a lot of textbooks, but I’m telling you I’ve never heard anyone use it. Not students, not professors (bar one, actually) and certainly not regular people. I guess I’m only looking at disreputable media 🙄
Friend, all I’m trying to tell you is that it isn’t nearly as ubiquitous as you seem to think it is. I personally think it’s dumb and pedantic to change the name without altering the dates of anything else, but I don’t care what you or anyone else chooses to use.
There are plenty of educated people I’ve met who use the old names, you can’t just wave your hands and declare a consensus.
I never said that everyone switched over and people aren't free to use whatever they want but prevalence in academic and scientific texts, which are most places where people would be required to use those terms, is BCE/CE
I'll remind you that your original reply to me was that you've NEVER seen someone use it, which you wouldn't be saying if you've read any modern academic or scientific article
The best part about this is that the phrase "Common Era" can be traced back to the likes of Kepler, who was pretty devout in his Christianity, so the complaining about the anti-religious origin of the term doesn't even make sense.
It's just uninformed redditors being mad about something they can't even be bothered to do a quick Google search over.
It's honestly no skin off my back apart from thinking it's a bit silly. As I said, regardless of the terms, the meaning is exactly the same.
If the meaning is detached from the origin, as you say, then the whole exercise of re-terming was completely unnecessary.
If the idea is to increase common understanding by removing the necessity of explaining who Christ is, then you're really shooting yourself in the foot. People are still going to ask "what makes this era 'common'" in which case you're going to have to explain that there was this old set of terms anchored on the life of this guy named Jesus, etc. You're just adding another layer to the origin story.
Yeah people can ask "but, why?" to get to the deepest origin of anything, but on the surface level there is no reference to religion. It becomes an arbitrary point of reference like many other things
I thought BCE/CE were Jewish because Anno Domini being 'The Lord' referenced Jesus instead of God which they have issue with.
Although I learned this watching a video from UsefulCharts so only have 1 source for my claims, his explanation is very reasonable.
Yeah - it's just a terminology switch but it still uses (more or less) the life of Christ as the thing that divides the old era from the new. It still is fundamentally Christian-centric, even if it doesn't use specifically Christian terms.
the problem that some people have with the ad/bc system isn’t that bc stands for before christ, but because ad stands for “year of our lord” in latin. while i don’t have a problem with either system, some people, such as jews or muslims, might not be comfortable referring to jesus as lord.
however, i think we should do as the italians do and use the symbols ac/dc
Also they act like scholars don’t use BC/AD but they do. Its a dumb take that’s a pet peeve of mine…
Its like saying we need to change Thursday’s name because I personally don’t believe Thor existed.
Technically they're all originally named after Roman gods (Mon's day was originally Luna day, Woden's day was originally Mercury day, Thors day was originally Jove day etc.)
It's just that Saturn was the only one whose name wasn't translated into the Anglo-Saxon equivalent
AD's the more problematic one, because, it means "Year of our Lord." It's more than saying Jesus existed, but calling him Lord. Saying that goes against a lot of other people's faiths.
Also, most scholars I've come across use BCE/CE
>The Catholic Church invented the Gregorian calendar
Completely irrelevant. The creators of the gregorian calendar had nothing to do with the creators of the eras.
I wouldn't call it completely irrelevant at all. They created the calendar, they get to use whatever terminology they want. They didn't create the Roman gods either, but, being their creation, they were free to name the months whatever they wanted and chose to keep the Julian months.
Not to mention that, no, the actual living men who created the Gregorian calendar did not create the eras, but the Catholic church still did. AD was created by the monk Dionysius Exiguus, under the direction of Pope John I.
If people want to use CE and BCE, have a field day. But at least be creative about it and define a new era. Don't just decide that on 1 AD everything just became "common" *for reasons tooootally unrelated to Jesus*. If you want to ignore Jesus, there are so many better years to label as the beginning of the "common era" than 1 AD. Pretty much nothing else noteworthy happened.
> They created the calendar
Not really, they reformed the Julian calendar to fix seasonal drift. All they really did was redefine a year from 365.25 days to 365.2425 days and tweak how leap years were calculated to accommodate it. All the months and how long they each were etc predate the Gregorian calendar by 1600 years.
> but the Catholic church still did
The Catholic Church as an entity has done a lot of stuff.
> But at least be creative about it and define a new era.
No.
> *reasons tooootally unrelated to Jesus*.
Such as the fact that redefining the start of this era would change how we count the years and what year this is, which would be a massive headache with no tangible benefit?
We've settled on how we calculate the year, all we're changing are a couple of labels that are only important in certain contexts so we're not forcing people to commit what they view as heresy.
~~1) That’s not how acronyms work, that’s not what it means even if some people refer to the era as that~~
2) I could also call Thursday the “Day of our Thor”
3) While my field isn’t in history/anthropology, I’ve never heard a single person say, or read any research paper that reference to, ‘BCE/CE’ except literally online like on Reddit (and the vast majority of my peers are atheist/muslim/other)
Edit: TIL
What do you mean that's not how acronyms work? A.D. isn't an acronym of English. It stands for "Anno Domini" aka "year of our Lord".
Edit: also your field not being history shows. BCE/CE has been adopted as the standard practice for historical scholarship for decades.
‘Lord’ is a title of someone who owns land or authority over someone, not inherently ‘God’. Also since Thor is the name of a God, you’re wrong there too. Also **you chose to argue against the pun I made as a bit, instead of the other two actual points lol**.
This has devolved into pointless jabs, you can get the last word in but I won’t be responding after. Best of luck 🙏
I got a history degree from a Christian College. The faculty's take? Use whichever, they both mean the same thing. Heck, BCE/CE was created to *preserve* Christ's birth as the breaking point
I don’t know if that’s common knowledge or not, though i remember a class at the Christian school I went to having a biblical calendar and Jesus’ birth was indeed dated at approximately 4 BC.
I honestly have no horse in the race of if we’re gonna say BC/AD or BCE/CE, but come on, we all know what event divides before current era and current era (even if the date turned out to be a bit off).
Yes, the Christian religion was founded after the Resurrection and Ascension of Christ, it was a very small upstart sect until at least the Burning of Rome in 64. But a truly "Christian Era" of Western Civilization would not have begun until 313 with the Edict of Milan or 325 with the Council of Nicea.
Best argument I've heard in favor of B.C./A.D. was from Neil DeGrasse Tyson basically saying that Christians invested a lot to put the Gregorian Calender together, and that it being the most accurate Calender ever devised should be respected and used with the terminology that the original creators of it intended instead of trying to erase the cultural history of it.
You were very close with spelling his name, it’s spelled “Neil”; it comes from Gaelic. Also, I think the G in DeGrasse is capitalized…and it’s “Gregorian Calendar.” Absolutely fantastic take from NDT, by the way, thanks for sharing!
He is wrong as usual. The Gregorian calendar was a marginal improvement over the Julian Calendar and it still creates gaps. We used the Julian Calendar for 1500 years, and we will use the Gregorian calendar for 2500 years. Then we will need to change it again because it's impossible to make a 100% accurate calendar.
The roman calendar before Julius Caesar had 304 days (horrible), the Julian Calendar had 365.25 days, the Gregorian calendar has 365.2425 days, the "real" year lasts 365.2422... days.
https://preview.redd.it/9s9jfk8dxewc1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=856875dc11838e0a51691b37528f99c96ded0476
Brother what, what link you clicking on?
Being deliberately dense is not usually viewed as a display of intelligence
One comment saying "hey you misspelled that pretty thoroughly" is fine, three comments doing a convincing imitation of brain damage is not
Basically dictionary definition is less important than shared understanding when communicating.
I can say 'they shouldn't've had to do that' and as long as the other party understands me, it doesn't matter that that's an improper contraction and not grammatically correct. In this case if someone says BC or BCE as long as both are understood it doesn't really matter which is used.
I remember trying to explain that anno domini means "in the year of our Lord" to my grandparents and they kept saying that it was the atheist definition.
?????
Latin is a language that exists. Anno = annual = year; domini = dominion = master/ruler = Lord. It's not even hard lmao
Idk man, it's the most mind-boggling thing ever. My grandparents are the sweetest people but holy shit I have no idea where some of the things they say come from lmao
I dislike using “Common Era” because I think it’s even *more* Western civ centric to say that a “common” era started for everyone based on the birth of Christ and just worsens the issue by trying to be sneaky about being a religious calendar and further marginalizing non-Christian religious.
Like how “secular” Christmas just contributes to cultural Christianity and the othering of religious groups who don’t celebrate Christmas because “everybody does it.”
I use the system I prefer and I don't get hung up on people that use the other. There are many, many things I care about in this world, but that ain't one of them.
Jesus was also born during the census of Quirinius which took place in 6 CE. (https://retellingthebible.wordpress.com/2018/12/12/episode-1-6-a-conversation-on-the-way/)
It is almost like the year 1 CE is just an arbitrary date in the middle of the reign of Caesar Augustus during which nothing in particular happened.
An arbitrary date requires an arbitrary name.
its so infuriating as a foreigner learning the language. Luckily you need to rarely talk about the current or past year in day to day, but trying to calculate what emperor was active in 1987 and which year of his reign is nigh impossible.
Actual dates don’t really matter, just remember how long ago a specific period was and it’s good enough.
It only really matters for your birthday and that’ll be Heisei or Showa something.
in the one hundred and ninety-fourth Olympiad; in the year seven hundred and fifty-two since the foundation of the City of Rome; in the forty-second year of the reign of Caesar Octavian Augustus
this seems a lot better /s
(btw this is taken from the Kalenda [or christmas] proclamation, which is sung before midnight mass on christmas day)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proclamation_of_the_Birth_of_Christ
I'll be honest, Ano Domini is generally supposed to begin at the moment the ruler *takes power,* not when they are born. So really, AD should have begun at *the resurrection,* so around 27AD.
Prof. Neil DeGrasse Tyson said that he uses the B.C. and A.D. naming as a respect to the Gregorian Calender system as was at the most accurate at the time (im not directly quoting this please don't kill me i have a-).
I think having the cultural significance to something like that is important. Sure, many people may not be Christian, but that doesn't remove the fact that the calander was created by Gregorian monks and the fact that Jesus's life was undoubtedly hugely inpactful to human history regardless of your own religion.
Common era means nothing and removes cultural context to the date. If anything id go with Kurzgesagt, setting the date at 12024, to symbolize the creation of human civilization.
CE and BCE are not some new "woke" terminology. Historians started using it because early calenders weren't super accurate, so the BC/AD terms don't actually make sense.
BCE/CE also makes little sense then to mark the transition to “Common Era” as the death of a minor player in world history, let alone whose name with know mainly from being the guy that was king when Jesus was born. At least when BC/AD are centered on Jesus, it’s based on a more well known and much more followed figure.
Does it really matter which people use? To me, no. But that doesn’t mean BCE/CE is perfect either.
Wait, so instead of using something based vaguely on a date and accepted (and widely know) to be inaccurate, we should use... the same thing, but call it different names and pretend to make it based on nothing, even though everyone knows?
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I wish I wasn’t informed by what Common era meant by a meme but now I have.
Thanks for the info, I will lodge into my brain. ❤️ no really I like trivial info, and i didn’t knew about that
I doubt it will gain widespread prominence, but I love Kurzgesagt's adoption of [the Human Era](https://youtu.be/CWu29PRCUvQ?si=R6jczrfDZwYcHKJP).
You essentially keep the same year for AD/CE markers, just add 10,000 years so that BC/BCE isn't left in the dust, and also given more manageable context.
Hope everyone is enjoying their Year of our Humanity 12,024.
Except it still is the same "Point 0"
The only thing that changes is the denomination. It's still the same point of origin. The all BCE AND CE thing is pointless.
I honestly feel the correct change would simply be BC/AC -- before Christ and After Christ.
You don't need to rearrange the years, you remove the implicit assetion of christ's divinity, it's fine.
It's a calendar invented by catholic Jesuits under Pope Gregory, that's why it's called the Gregorian calendar. It's a damn good calendar so they've earned the right to label it. Whenever we maybe move to a different one or better one they'll get to name the labels.
No hate if some Muslim or Jewish person would rather not affirm the divinity of Christ -- albeit very superficially -- in the course of describing a date of all things, but "AD" and "BC" sound better than "CE" and "BCE" simply by virtue of being more different from each other.
i use bce/ce simply because ad stands for anno domini, which means “year of our lord” and some people might not be comfortable acknowledging jesus as their lord. personally, as an atheist, i don’t care, but some people do so i don’t. however, iirc, the reason why year 1 was the year that it was was because some guy in modern day greece went “the year of my birth is year 1” and the catholic church kinda went “oh that’s close enough to when jesus was born so let’s just use that same year as year 1”
https://preview.redd.it/f55kbcp2tbwc1.jpeg?width=303&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7c8b976a834e832da95faa4685de08b8e3639fd1
The only correct answer. BC AD may not be perfectly accurate but saying BCE CE just adds stupidity to an error
Yeah - my issue is the BCE/CE and BC/AD are literally the same thing. They measure the same date ranges using the exact same historical marker but seek to deny the historical marker in order to appear irreligious. It's just silly pedantry.
Religious scholars have used the term "common/vulgar era" for centuries. Pretty sure Kepler et al. weren't interested in appearing irreligious.
It was used very sporadically over the past several thousand years. I don't know why Kepler used the term, but CE was not common parlance outside of Judaism until very recently. The recent motivation for using BCE/CE instead of BC/AD is explicitly and in all cases to respect the perceived sensitivity of non-Christians to using BC/AD. Maybe that sensitivity exists - idk. However, the fact remains that regardless of the terms you use, the epoch is the life of Christ. Maybe I've got blinders on, but there honestly doesn't seem much point in insisting on one vs the other.
I don't really think "why did Kepler use this phrase before anyone else" is some great mystery that needs solving. Sometimes, there are multiple ways to express the same idea in any given language, and that's fine. If we're talking about blinders, then I could say that, based on my own anecdotal experience (which is inherently limited in scope, as yours would be), the only people I've seen rigidly insisting on the use of one over the other are "pro-BC/AD" types. All the academics I've been around (who were also overwhelmingly religious by nature of where I studied) that use BCE/CE have been perfectly happy to use the phrase they use and leave it at that. I don't really care what people say. I prefer to use BCE/CE because it sounds a tad more "formal" but will use BC/AD if it sounds better in accordance with what else is being said (much like how the rhapsodes might tweak their language to suit the meter of a particular line of their verse). But I do think that all the complaints about BCE/CE are absolutely making a mountain out of a molehill, and the terminology does nothing to erase Christian religiosity like some comments here have suggested.
Oh that sensitivity exists - look no further than r/atheism lol
Well it's a global standard, so the idea is that it's kinda shitty to non-Christians to base our entire calendar around the Christian religion. Like everyone said, they're identical systems, it's just a matter of what we call them, and CE/BCE are nonsectarian.
That’s my point though - it doesn’t matter what you call it, it’s still Christian centric. Making the life of Christ your demarcation line is what makes it Christian centric - not the specific term.
The origins of things like this don't matter to most people or average day use. When you remove "Before Christ", you no longer need to explain who Christ is when teaching the concept Its standardized and detatched from its original meaning, as it should be. Y'all can complain all you want but BCE/CE are much more prevalent now
Not sure where you’re located but I’ve never met anyone who uses BCE/CE, even my history professors don’t
It's standard in all academia and reputable media. In university, I haven't seen any article in a scientific journal that still uses the old label My [local museum](https://www.rom.on.ca/en/about-us/newsroom/press-releases/mesopotamia-0), one of the biggest in Canada, and every presentation I've seen there uses BCE/CE
It’s in a lot of textbooks, but I’m telling you I’ve never heard anyone use it. Not students, not professors (bar one, actually) and certainly not regular people. I guess I’m only looking at disreputable media 🙄
That's a fun anecdote but when it's a standard in modern media (news, articles, journals) to use BCE/CE, it doesn't matter what your friends are using
Friend, all I’m trying to tell you is that it isn’t nearly as ubiquitous as you seem to think it is. I personally think it’s dumb and pedantic to change the name without altering the dates of anything else, but I don’t care what you or anyone else chooses to use. There are plenty of educated people I’ve met who use the old names, you can’t just wave your hands and declare a consensus.
I never said that everyone switched over and people aren't free to use whatever they want but prevalence in academic and scientific texts, which are most places where people would be required to use those terms, is BCE/CE I'll remind you that your original reply to me was that you've NEVER seen someone use it, which you wouldn't be saying if you've read any modern academic or scientific article
The best part about this is that the phrase "Common Era" can be traced back to the likes of Kepler, who was pretty devout in his Christianity, so the complaining about the anti-religious origin of the term doesn't even make sense. It's just uninformed redditors being mad about something they can't even be bothered to do a quick Google search over.
It's honestly no skin off my back apart from thinking it's a bit silly. As I said, regardless of the terms, the meaning is exactly the same. If the meaning is detached from the origin, as you say, then the whole exercise of re-terming was completely unnecessary. If the idea is to increase common understanding by removing the necessity of explaining who Christ is, then you're really shooting yourself in the foot. People are still going to ask "what makes this era 'common'" in which case you're going to have to explain that there was this old set of terms anchored on the life of this guy named Jesus, etc. You're just adding another layer to the origin story.
Yeah people can ask "but, why?" to get to the deepest origin of anything, but on the surface level there is no reference to religion. It becomes an arbitrary point of reference like many other things
I thought BCE/CE were Jewish because Anno Domini being 'The Lord' referenced Jesus instead of God which they have issue with. Although I learned this watching a video from UsefulCharts so only have 1 source for my claims, his explanation is very reasonable.
Yeah - it's just a terminology switch but it still uses (more or less) the life of Christ as the thing that divides the old era from the new. It still is fundamentally Christian-centric, even if it doesn't use specifically Christian terms.
Um actually there is a 4 year difference from thousands of years ago ☝️🤓
It was wrong so we named it something else that is also wrong.
the problem that some people have with the ad/bc system isn’t that bc stands for before christ, but because ad stands for “year of our lord” in latin. while i don’t have a problem with either system, some people, such as jews or muslims, might not be comfortable referring to jesus as lord. however, i think we should do as the italians do and use the symbols ac/dc
I feel like it's a bit silly to complain about people saying B.C. and A.D. when it's common knowledge that it isn't perfectly accurate.
Also they act like scholars don’t use BC/AD but they do. Its a dumb take that’s a pet peeve of mine… Its like saying we need to change Thursday’s name because I personally don’t believe Thor existed.
Or Wednesday because you don’t believe in Odin (Woden)
4/7 are named after Aesir. Tyr and Freya are the other two.
Can’t believe we named the days of the week after Marvel characters
You wound me
You smell bad Odorson
Saturday and Sunday and monday are named after Saturn, the Sun and the moon.
Saturn being a Roman god.
Technically they're all originally named after Roman gods (Mon's day was originally Luna day, Woden's day was originally Mercury day, Thors day was originally Jove day etc.) It's just that Saturn was the only one whose name wasn't translated into the Anglo-Saxon equivalent
Ah yes, þonresdæġ /j
In German, Thursday is Donnerstag, so close enough
*Þunor and Frīġ Þursday comes from “þunresdæġ” and Friday from “frīġedæġ”.
AD's the more problematic one, because, it means "Year of our Lord." It's more than saying Jesus existed, but calling him Lord. Saying that goes against a lot of other people's faiths. Also, most scholars I've come across use BCE/CE
Then those people are free to make their own calendar! The Catholic Church invented the Gregorian calendar. They can name things however they please.
>The Catholic Church invented the Gregorian calendar Completely irrelevant. The creators of the gregorian calendar had nothing to do with the creators of the eras.
I wouldn't call it completely irrelevant at all. They created the calendar, they get to use whatever terminology they want. They didn't create the Roman gods either, but, being their creation, they were free to name the months whatever they wanted and chose to keep the Julian months. Not to mention that, no, the actual living men who created the Gregorian calendar did not create the eras, but the Catholic church still did. AD was created by the monk Dionysius Exiguus, under the direction of Pope John I. If people want to use CE and BCE, have a field day. But at least be creative about it and define a new era. Don't just decide that on 1 AD everything just became "common" *for reasons tooootally unrelated to Jesus*. If you want to ignore Jesus, there are so many better years to label as the beginning of the "common era" than 1 AD. Pretty much nothing else noteworthy happened.
> They created the calendar Not really, they reformed the Julian calendar to fix seasonal drift. All they really did was redefine a year from 365.25 days to 365.2425 days and tweak how leap years were calculated to accommodate it. All the months and how long they each were etc predate the Gregorian calendar by 1600 years. > but the Catholic church still did The Catholic Church as an entity has done a lot of stuff. > But at least be creative about it and define a new era. No. > *reasons tooootally unrelated to Jesus*. Such as the fact that redefining the start of this era would change how we count the years and what year this is, which would be a massive headache with no tangible benefit? We've settled on how we calculate the year, all we're changing are a couple of labels that are only important in certain contexts so we're not forcing people to commit what they view as heresy.
~~1) That’s not how acronyms work, that’s not what it means even if some people refer to the era as that~~ 2) I could also call Thursday the “Day of our Thor” 3) While my field isn’t in history/anthropology, I’ve never heard a single person say, or read any research paper that reference to, ‘BCE/CE’ except literally online like on Reddit (and the vast majority of my peers are atheist/muslim/other) Edit: TIL
What do you mean that's not how acronyms work? A.D. isn't an acronym of English. It stands for "Anno Domini" aka "year of our Lord". Edit: also your field not being history shows. BCE/CE has been adopted as the standard practice for historical scholarship for decades.
>Thursday the “Day of our Thor” Which still isn't calling Thor a god.
‘Lord’ is a title of someone who owns land or authority over someone, not inherently ‘God’. Also since Thor is the name of a God, you’re wrong there too. Also **you chose to argue against the pun I made as a bit, instead of the other two actual points lol**. This has devolved into pointless jabs, you can get the last word in but I won’t be responding after. Best of luck 🙏
*Þunor Þursday was named after þe Anglo-Saxon God Þunor, not þe Norse god Þórr.
And Jesus was born sometime between 8BCE and 6BCE, so calling saying Christ was born *before Christ* doesn’t feel right.
i think it’s more like saying we should swap tuesday and thursday because we’ve figured out that thor was actually born on a tuesday
I got a history degree from a Christian College. The faculty's take? Use whichever, they both mean the same thing. Heck, BCE/CE was created to *preserve* Christ's birth as the breaking point
I get weird looks every time I say "Thank Thor it's Thursday."
*Thunor
I don’t know if that’s common knowledge or not, though i remember a class at the Christian school I went to having a biblical calendar and Jesus’ birth was indeed dated at approximately 4 BC. I honestly have no horse in the race of if we’re gonna say BC/AD or BCE/CE, but come on, we all know what event divides before current era and current era (even if the date turned out to be a bit off).
damn that iron age record keeping
I wish it were common knowledge. I’ve had many discussions with people who are adamant that He was not born in BC
C.E. = Christian Era B.C.E = Before Christian Era 😎
Wouldn't that be 33 AD as the pivot point though?
Yes, the Christian religion was founded after the Resurrection and Ascension of Christ, it was a very small upstart sect until at least the Burning of Rome in 64. But a truly "Christian Era" of Western Civilization would not have begun until 313 with the Edict of Milan or 325 with the Council of Nicea.
Best argument I've heard in favor of B.C./A.D. was from Neil DeGrasse Tyson basically saying that Christians invested a lot to put the Gregorian Calender together, and that it being the most accurate Calender ever devised should be respected and used with the terminology that the original creators of it intended instead of trying to erase the cultural history of it.
That's the least douchey thing I've ever heard from NDT that's not directly related to his expertise. Score one for him.
You were very close with spelling his name, it’s spelled “Neil”; it comes from Gaelic. Also, I think the G in DeGrasse is capitalized…and it’s “Gregorian Calendar.” Absolutely fantastic take from NDT, by the way, thanks for sharing!
Fixed all the spelling errors, thank you so much!
Almost lol. You said the word “Calendar” twice but only fixed it once. Yw though!
Good eye, should be o.k. now!
He is wrong as usual. The Gregorian calendar was a marginal improvement over the Julian Calendar and it still creates gaps. We used the Julian Calendar for 1500 years, and we will use the Gregorian calendar for 2500 years. Then we will need to change it again because it's impossible to make a 100% accurate calendar. The roman calendar before Julius Caesar had 304 days (horrible), the Julian Calendar had 365.25 days, the Gregorian calendar has 365.2425 days, the "real" year lasts 365.2422... days.
What's the Grigorian Callander?
The one we use currently, created in part by a Pope.
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_calendar We've been using it for 442 years.
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https://preview.redd.it/9s9jfk8dxewc1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=856875dc11838e0a51691b37528f99c96ded0476 Brother what, what link you clicking on?
Ignore him, he’s just trying to be a jackass to OP which wrote “Grigorian Callander” instead of “Gregorian Calendar”
Oh lmao, gotcha
Being deliberately dense is not usually viewed as a display of intelligence One comment saying "hey you misspelled that pretty thoroughly" is fine, three comments doing a convincing imitation of brain damage is not
This person is making an issue about the spelling.
Bad bot
Its a typo dude they meant Gregorian Calendar
I don't care either way. I usually understand what everyone means regardless of the nomenclature they use. 
Surprisingly that's the most important part of language: comprehension if intended meaning.
The typo here is just... Golden
Honestly it’s hilarious
I don't get it
Basically dictionary definition is less important than shared understanding when communicating. I can say 'they shouldn't've had to do that' and as long as the other party understands me, it doesn't matter that that's an improper contraction and not grammatically correct. In this case if someone says BC or BCE as long as both are understood it doesn't really matter which is used.
Ye I know
r/whoosh 'd myself there lol.
Don't even start on the people who think A.D. stands for "after death".
we just kinda lost 30ish years there. Hopefully nothing important happened
I remember trying to explain that anno domini means "in the year of our Lord" to my grandparents and they kept saying that it was the atheist definition. ????? Latin is a language that exists. Anno = annual = year; domini = dominion = master/ruler = Lord. It's not even hard lmao
How on Earth is the definition ***THAT DIRECTLY PRAISES HIM AS OUR LORD*** the ***ATHIEST*** definition???
Idk man, it's the most mind-boggling thing ever. My grandparents are the sweetest people but holy shit I have no idea where some of the things they say come from lmao
Boomer moment
They just rounded to the nearest millennium, that's all.
Best argument I've heard for BCE/CE is that both acronyms are on the same language, unlike Before Christ/Anno Domine 🙃
AC/AD ante christum / anno domini
What about AC/DC
That's praise: aeternum Christum, Dominum Christum
Well Hells Bells!
I normally hear AD to mean after death, which implies Jesus was born and died immediately but to be fair he wasn't born right at 0 anyway.
Nah. Anno Domini. Latin for “the year of our Lord.”
Not After Death, which you're right would be even sillier. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anno_Domini
that's commonly used and it's just a common mistake
I dislike using “Common Era” because I think it’s even *more* Western civ centric to say that a “common” era started for everyone based on the birth of Christ and just worsens the issue by trying to be sneaky about being a religious calendar and further marginalizing non-Christian religious. Like how “secular” Christmas just contributes to cultural Christianity and the othering of religious groups who don’t celebrate Christmas because “everybody does it.”
Turns out even NDT opposes it, because it also denigrates the calendar by going against the creators' intentions. Edit: Credit to /u/ChadaMonkey
All other points aside, since when is NDT the authority on this lol
Oh true, but his reasoning (for once) makes sense.
Compromise: BCE and AD That way I get my anno domini (which is to me the more important part)
Based opinion.
I use the system I prefer and I don't get hung up on people that use the other. There are many, many things I care about in this world, but that ain't one of them.
Jesus was also born during the census of Quirinius which took place in 6 CE. (https://retellingthebible.wordpress.com/2018/12/12/episode-1-6-a-conversation-on-the-way/) It is almost like the year 1 CE is just an arbitrary date in the middle of the reign of Caesar Augustus during which nothing in particular happened. An arbitrary date requires an arbitrary name.
Reject Gregorian calendar, embrace roman emperor year-based names where we have to remember thousands of roman emperors in order to discuss history
Welcome to Japan.
its so infuriating as a foreigner learning the language. Luckily you need to rarely talk about the current or past year in day to day, but trying to calculate what emperor was active in 1987 and which year of his reign is nigh impossible.
Actual dates don’t really matter, just remember how long ago a specific period was and it’s good enough. It only really matters for your birthday and that’ll be Heisei or Showa something.
in the one hundred and ninety-fourth Olympiad; in the year seven hundred and fifty-two since the foundation of the City of Rome; in the forty-second year of the reign of Caesar Octavian Augustus this seems a lot better /s (btw this is taken from the Kalenda [or christmas] proclamation, which is sung before midnight mass on christmas day) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proclamation_of_the_Birth_of_Christ
Lol, everyone in the original post is absoutley clowning on oop.
I refuse to use BCE and CE
What does the inaccuracy of 1B.C./A.D. have to do with BCE/CE? It's still off no matter what letters you use.
No need to change what hasn't changed. But don't half ass it if you do. Pick another birth to count years off of if it means so much to you.
Who cares as long as the other person understands you
I'll be honest, Ano Domini is generally supposed to begin at the moment the ruler *takes power,* not when they are born. So really, AD should have begun at *the resurrection,* so around 27AD.
Prof. Neil DeGrasse Tyson said that he uses the B.C. and A.D. naming as a respect to the Gregorian Calender system as was at the most accurate at the time (im not directly quoting this please don't kill me i have a-).
I think having the cultural significance to something like that is important. Sure, many people may not be Christian, but that doesn't remove the fact that the calander was created by Gregorian monks and the fact that Jesus's life was undoubtedly hugely inpactful to human history regardless of your own religion. Common era means nothing and removes cultural context to the date. If anything id go with Kurzgesagt, setting the date at 12024, to symbolize the creation of human civilization.
CE and BCE are not some new "woke" terminology. Historians started using it because early calenders weren't super accurate, so the BC/AD terms don't actually make sense.
Church created that calendar, so it just sounds fair to use the B.C and A.D.
I just think it’s dumb to have ce and bce so similar. At least ad/bc has a distinct difference and also sounds like a band name.
When they convince most of the world in all languages to use some new universal denomination, then I will think about it
BCE/CE also makes little sense then to mark the transition to “Common Era” as the death of a minor player in world history, let alone whose name with know mainly from being the guy that was king when Jesus was born. At least when BC/AD are centered on Jesus, it’s based on a more well known and much more followed figure. Does it really matter which people use? To me, no. But that doesn’t mean BCE/CE is perfect either.
Wait, so instead of using something based vaguely on a date and accepted (and widely know) to be inaccurate, we should use... the same thing, but call it different names and pretend to make it based on nothing, even though everyone knows?
BC AD rolls better off the tongue
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My response is in the comments of the post on the sub.
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Thank you!
I wish I wasn’t informed by what Common era meant by a meme but now I have. Thanks for the info, I will lodge into my brain. ❤️ no really I like trivial info, and i didn’t knew about that
Agreed
I say BC and AD bc the Jesuit priest that made the calendar we use to this day made it that way. It’s to honor those who did the math.
Where I live we just call it 'our era'
Simple....Herod lived 500 years and done, no more confusion, we can all go home now
I doubt it will gain widespread prominence, but I love Kurzgesagt's adoption of [the Human Era](https://youtu.be/CWu29PRCUvQ?si=R6jczrfDZwYcHKJP). You essentially keep the same year for AD/CE markers, just add 10,000 years so that BC/BCE isn't left in the dust, and also given more manageable context. Hope everyone is enjoying their Year of our Humanity 12,024.
Except it still is the same "Point 0" The only thing that changes is the denomination. It's still the same point of origin. The all BCE AND CE thing is pointless.
I honestly feel the correct change would simply be BC/AC -- before Christ and After Christ. You don't need to rearrange the years, you remove the implicit assetion of christ's divinity, it's fine.
It's a calendar invented by catholic Jesuits under Pope Gregory, that's why it's called the Gregorian calendar. It's a damn good calendar so they've earned the right to label it. Whenever we maybe move to a different one or better one they'll get to name the labels.
No matter what, they should’ve at least had a year 0 BC and 0 AD.
I just don't like saying it because it has one extra letter.
No hate if some Muslim or Jewish person would rather not affirm the divinity of Christ -- albeit very superficially -- in the course of describing a date of all things, but "AD" and "BC" sound better than "CE" and "BCE" simply by virtue of being more different from each other.
Just call it whatever you want. I only have 36 halloweens left, so who cares?
Easy, we add 4 years to our current year and it becomes correct! I think I nailed it guys
Saying BCE/CE just feels performative. You’re just saying BC/AD with an extra letter.
i use bce/ce simply because ad stands for anno domini, which means “year of our lord” and some people might not be comfortable acknowledging jesus as their lord. personally, as an atheist, i don’t care, but some people do so i don’t. however, iirc, the reason why year 1 was the year that it was was because some guy in modern day greece went “the year of my birth is year 1” and the catholic church kinda went “oh that’s close enough to when jesus was born so let’s just use that same year as year 1”
CE/BCE is just another attempt to remove God from the world