Talk:Common Era/Archive 1

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This archive page covers 2002 and 2003.

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The argument that I've always subscribed to, and I don't think its been mentioned here, is that there is an excellent reason to use BC and AD as opposed to CE and BCE. With CE and BCE we use Jesus' birth (approximate) as a dividing line for no good reason AND with no historical context for why we do so. With BC and AD we still use the same dividing line but at least it is OBVIOUS as to why. It seems the PC posse dropped the ball on this one. As long as the dividing line is "biased" by being Christian-centric it seems appropriate that it be CLEAR that it is biased. Calling it BCE and CE just makes things more confusing. At least if its AD everyone KNOWS that the Christian mode is prominent. --Dante Alighieri 21:47 Dec 5, 2002 (UTC)

There is no such thing as a "PC posse", so let's please cut the use of smear terms like 'PC' out of this discussion. The fact is that a year numbering scheme is just a year numbering scheme. It doesn't matter what the origins of it is, as long as it serves its purpose of allowing us to refer to years in a consistent manner. The fact is that our months go back to the Romans and refer to Roman gods and emperors and such, but no one cares anymore. Even if we don't subscribe to the Roman religion, we use the months by those names. Similarly, although we use the legacy year numbering scheme, there is absolutely no reason to make the "Christian mode prominent," just as we don't make the Roman religion prominent any more than we have to. After all, a year numbering scheme can use any baseline at all, and unless we want to start renumbering by choosing a different year 1 (like the French revolutionaries tried to do), which seems like way too much trouble, then there is no reason not to inherit the legacy calendar, but there is also no reason not to make it a little less explicitly Christian in a manner that is simple and which doesn't actually affect the calendar. That is to say, there is also no reason why can't replace AD with CE--it doesn't change the calendar, but it does use a more respectful and inclusive way of refering to it. The modern Western calendar is common to the West, and therefore it is the "Common Era". Simple enough. soulpatch

I'm afraid I have to disagree, calling it CE is not a more respectful and inclusive practice. I understand that it is an ATTEMPT to be that, but it still glosses over the fact that our current system of calendrics is primarily Christian. I would argue that the limited good achieved by CE (I say limited because the use of Christ's birth is still a "problem") is outweighed by the fact that it removes the historical context from the calender. Also, while my use of the term "PC posse" was, admittedly, questionable, the argument about CE does strike me as an issue of political correctness. With words like respectful and inclusive used to describe the issue, I think it's at least arguable. --Dante Alighieri 22:05 Dec 5, 2002 (UTC)


The problem is not so much with BC. "Before Christ" is descriptive, just like "Before Common Era". "Before Christ" is illogical, but I'm willing to live with that. The problem is with "Anno Domini". To an atheist, or as a matter of fact to any non-monotheist, the notion that we are living in the "year 2002 of the Lord" may simply be unacceptable, especially in an otherwise neutral, historical text. To them, it is simply not a fact, they are not living in a year governed by a supernatural power. That was after all the reason Bede chose this term: To remind everyone, lest they forget, that the church (as God's medium) was the only acceptable authority.

Add to this the fact that the historical person Jesus was not even born in the year 0, and it makes a lot of sense to use a less loaded and more accurate term that still provides us with consistency. Your argument, Dante, that bias should be accepted to "inform people about the historical origins" makes little sense, because AD says nothing about Jesus. Furthermore, we do not use historical terms if they are no longer appropriate -- we do no longer refer to masturbation as "self-abuse", for example. The world today is more secular than the world of the Dark Ages, and a transition to a more secular naming convention makes perfect sense (we would already be using a new calendar if that was practical). CE is a good, neutral alternative without any disadvantages. We should use it where we need to qualify numbers to make clear that they are year numbers. I would have preferred it if the standard would be BC/CE instead of the clumsy BCE, but if we use CE, we should use BCE in the same texts where appropriate. --Eloquence

Well, if some atheists or non-monotheists find the term "unacceptable" I would argue that they have too little to worry about in life. I'm an agnostic. I also happen to have a special distate for organized religion in general and Christianity and the Catholic Church in particular, so I'm certainly not advocating the usage of BC/AD for Bede's reason. I still maintain that as long as we are using an inherently biased system of calendrics the LEAST we can do is make the bias OBVIOUS and AD (even if the word Christ isn't in there) does a MUCH better job then CE. Clearly you and soulpatch disagree with me on this point. I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on this one. As far as USING CE and BCE in the wiki, I have no real issue with that. Like you said, if we use CE we should use BCE. --Dante Alighieri 22:28 Dec 5, 2002 (UTC)

I know where you're coming from. The problem is that by keeping the "Anno Domini" usage, you don't just make a bias obvious, you say something in a biased way.
Which is surely the case every time one says "Tuesday" or "goodbye". I'm an atheist, and prefer BC/AD to BCE/CE quite strongly, largely because "BCE" and "CE" are too similar, and there's too much potential for misprints. I'd be happier with abbreviations more easily differentiated at a glance. I don't find the Common Era setup in any way offensive, and certainly won't be going round editing articles that use it - but "AD" is not a term I find remotely inappropriate for me as an atheist to use. 81.156.167.143 13:20, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Making a bias obvious would be "the year 1000 AD, as per the Christian calendar and terminology, which many people consider ..". Besides, whereas you may see the entire calendar as problematic, the people who use CE/BCE don't really see a need to change our calendar -- as Soulpatch said, consistency is important. But the naming should be neutral. --Eloquence

Oh, and as for the "have too little to worry about in life" -- we have been arguing about far more trivial matters than this on Wikipedia. The "it's not that important" argument has historically been one of the most common ones to preserve the status quo. Progress comes from little changes. -Eloquence

BCE has too many letters. Why don't we shorten it? We could just use BC and tell everyone it stands for Before Common-Era ;) -- Tim 23:25 Dec 11, 2002 (UTC)

NPOVed some terms:

  • because the literal latin meaning In the Year of Our Lord (well actually it means more and Anno Domini is a shortened version, not the actual full phrase) does not mean that the correct way to use it is AD {number}. If we spoke Latin, yes, but we don't. English usage has long since adopted {number} AD and so that is now equally correct. (Insisting that only AD {number} is correct is as ridiculous as saying cows is wrong, the plural of cow is still kyne, you is wrong, the word is thee, etc.
  • Talking about Christian domination over western civilisation is blatently POV. I have changed that to Christian dominance in western civilisation which makes the same point in a neutral manner without indicating the writer's POV. The earlier version seeped POV.

Re the old debate above - I'm for BC/AD. I agree with Dante. How many people even know what AD means? People swear using the name Jesus all the time. That doesn't mean they mean Jesus Christ. It means they express a shock word to express their anger/rage, etc. Frankly I think the BCE/CE is political correctness at its most absurd. Take a term that in post christian times means nothing more than a set of letters, take offence at a long gone non-existent meaning and demand it be changed. If ever you wanted a classic example of this woolly-headed PC nonsense, Soulpatch inadvertently summed it up perfectly. He wrote:

The fact is that our months go back to the Romans and refer to Roman gods and emperors and such, but no one cares anymore. Even if we don't subscribe to the Roman religion, we use the months by those names. Similarly, although we use the legacy year numbering scheme, there is absolutely no reason to make the "Christian mode prominent," just as we don't make the Roman religion prominent any more than we have to.

Come again? It is OK to use Roman gods and emperors because no-one cares anymore. Right? And then it is right to abandon AD because "there is no reason to make the Christian mode prominent"! Oh. So it is OK to use terms that mean nothing because they mean nothing (Roman gods) but it is wrong to use a term that for most people means nothing because it using it we'd be making that mode more prominent. But surely if that was the case, using the Roman Gods is wrong too, because that makes their mode prominent? Or if the fact that people have moved beyond them makes them now innocuous, how come we can't do the same in an era when the vast majority of people are no longer about christianity, an era when the letters AD have no more meaning for people than calling a month June? It is classic political correctness at its utterly inconsistent. If this one 100 years ago and many people passionately took AD to mean something important then you could understand an argument being made for a more neutral term, but in an era when most people aren't church-going, when many people are not of any major faith, to take offensive at something at the very moment when it has because it now means so little to people it is at its most inoffensive, is plain dumb. Or rather is nothing to do with achieving neutrality and in language and everyone to do with one set of language users using language to give the two fingers to another set who aren't bothering them. It is classic PC nuttiness, or what some people call staged anger transference.FearÉIREANN 06:52 16 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I've just got rid of a couple of instances where people had inserted CE into articles for no apparent reason. Like it or not, the Christian year count is the default in the world. Within that year count, a year without qualification is assumed to be AD. As others have said, most people don't even know what AD stands for in Latin, much less the meaning of the Latin.

Oh, and to those who say that AD is something that Atheists etc might find offensive, it could easily be said to go the other way as well. Personally, I find the use of CE/BCE offensive. It is change for no good reason. There is an existing nomenclature that adequate describes the situation. Until and unless the apocalypse happens, we will not run out of integers to keep counting the passing years.

This is a subject that arouses passions to an extent. In that case, go with what the majority of the world uses: AD/BC. It doesn't matter what the historical reasons for them using that system are. It doesn't matter to most people what the abbreviations mean. What matters is that they are most recognised and widely used conventions around. David Newton 08:21, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)