BC/AD, or BCE/CE

[crtChunk]

I've never known about a "raging" debate going on in theological/historical circles...

www.studentsfriend.com/feed/topic11.html

The debate is whether or not we should all adopt BCE/CE as opposed to BC/AD, so that we can be more sensitive to non-Christians who are using the same calendar...

I was wondering what thoughts were over here... (this is the only forum I know of that has a biblical discussions forum...)

[Brooke]

First off, nice to see you back around these forums, Chunk.

I hadn't heard about this either. This falls right along the lines of taking the phrase 'under God' out of the pledge and 'in God we trust' off our currency. After all, it might offend someone who doesn't believe. I don't agree with that. Our country was founded on Christianity, and our forefathers clearly had that in mind.

From the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

From the US Constitution:

...present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth...

From a letter to Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase, around the time of the Civil War:

One fact touching our currency has hitherto been seriously overlooked. I mean the recognition of the Almighty God in some form on our coins. November 13, 1861

This would make a beautiful coin, to which no possible citizen could object. This would relieve us from the ignominy of heathenism. This would place us openly under the Divine protection we have personally claimed.

James Pollock, Director of the Mint at Philadelphia (not in response to that one letter, but to letters of the same nature:

No nation can be strong except in the strength of God, or safe except in His defense. The trust of our people in God should be declared on our national coins.November 20, 1861

Congress added the words 'under God' to the pledge in 1954, after a campaign by the Knights of Columbus.

However, those things related to the United States. The issue you mention is a world issue. I personally see no problem keeping 'BC' and 'AD' as the way we identify the years. It sounds like a good system to me, using Jesus' birth as a way to distinguish, but I don't know very much about this issue. I am categorizing it along with all the other attempts at removing all mention of God and Christ. I would have to do more research on this before I can say too much about it, as I have never given much thought to the dating system we have. Thanks for showing me this, though.

I was reading a forum thread just the other day about how old the earth is...


Sites:
In God We Trust Motto

[Rat]

Did you know that a "day" cannot really occur without a "night"? So a day is a cycle of a period of light followed by darkness.

Makes you think a bit when something happened in a day before a day even really existed.

Did you know the earth also has to spin to create this day? The earth couldn't spin before it was created...

So it took all day to create the earth. That was quite a jumpstart.

Enjoy your day!

[BShanahan14rulz]

goodness, rat, now you've gone and broken my brain again!

"The debate is whether or not we should all adopt BCE/CE as opposed to BC/AD, so that we can be more sensitive to non-Christians who are using the same calendar..." -Chunk


Changing the date markers is almost like trying to change America from a Standard measuring system to a metric one. Nobody is willing to do this because they are too lazy to have to remember to change it from using centimeters to inches, gallons to litres, etc. Personally, I don't mind if it changes. If it results in fewer religious disagreements between "different" religions, then heck, go for it, I'm sure (well, ok, I think) God won't mind attempts at peace. but I doubt such a small change will make that great of a difference.

"I hadn't heard about this either. This falls right along the lines of taking the phrase 'under God' out of the pledge and 'in God we trust' off our currency. After all, it might offend someone who doesn't believe. I don't agree with that. Our country was founded on Christianity, and our forefathers clearly had that in mind. " -Brooke

I definitely agree with this, but jabbering over small stuff like BC/AD changing to BCE/CE shouldn't be whats being argued with all one's might. On the idea of the removal of God from our Country, Thats just plain wrong. Like Brooke said, our founding fathers definitely had religion in their mind when they started this country. Heck, many of the colonies were centers for religious tolerance, independence from the anglican church, stuff like that. (not to say that they were run out unfairly by the anglicans, i believe the puritains killed a British king and cromwell took the throne. I could see why they'd wanna get rid of the puritains)
If we let people remove God completely from all legal documents, tender, and public buildings, they will have no more targets except churches, and that will be what they will fight to rid this Nation of once they are finished "cleansing" the government of all mention of our Creator.

[crtChunk]

Well, my "problem" with this is that it doesn't actually change anything.

1 AD = 1 CE
5 BC = 5 BCE

What's the point? I personally see it that the calendar was created based on the birth of Jesus (even though, in hindsight, there's arguments supporting a case that the calendar is wrong, and that Jesus' birth is 4 or 5 BC...)

Whether you mark the dates as AD or CE, it's still based off the same "event"...

Not sure why it has to be changed (my own personal opinion). If Jewish people are feeling left out (as one stated in the post I linked above) then they should create their own calendar based on their own event and try to use that (a bit of pig-headed Americanism coming out there... sorry).

So, my point: the calendar that has been widely accepted and is in use by a large part of the world (at least in a business sense) has been based on the birth of Jesus (even if it's now off a few years), and therefore the abbreviations of BC and AD should stand the test of time, or until an entirely new calendar system is created.

Just my own opinion...