What Do You Think About a New Date System?

[megashawn]

It seems that we are using a calendar based on a christian timeframe. Does this date that we go by have any meaning to us other then it was 2003 years ago when jesus died?

Well, I don't think it does. It doesn't seem right that we should go by a date based on a religion with no basis in reality.

I've been doing it for some time, almost naturally, writing my dates like 7/7/3 instead of 03 or 2003. I was thinking about it the other day, I propose its time for another change in dates.

We've got BC, which means "before christ" I had always understood. So, 4000 bc is 4000 years before the christian era. AD means an·no Dom·i·ni (from www.dictionary.com ) and basically means any year during the christian era.

I propose, unless the christian god has something to say about it, the christian era is over, and we should move for a new letter designation by the date. Something such as ne or na for "New Era" or "New Age". Something neutral. Something, so that everytime we have to write the date down, we're not forced to realize we live in a world dominated by closed minds.

Ooh, got an even better one. Since technology is so dominate now, let's call it "bot" "Begining of Technology"

7/7/3 bot

and not that the letters are all that important, we could just drop them all together. Plus, starting are year count over at 0, in the year 2000, makes writing the date easier for some hundred years.

 

[kat]

There already is an alternative dating system used particularly in historical and scholarly litature, I believe it was specificly developed in order to be sensitive to the fact that not all scholars are christian. The other dating system uses The abbreviation "C.E." as a standard way of denoting dates in scholarly literature. C. E. means "Common Era" and B.C.E. denotes "Before the Common Era." The year 1 C.E. is the same as the year 1 A.D.


The abbreviations AD and BC do profess the Christian faith: Anno Domini, meaning "in the year of Our Lord", BC states that Jesus is the Christ. Scholars are aware of this, so a neutral way of denoting the year was devised.

Just like AD, the CE system counts the birth of Jesus as year 1.

BUT in actuality we do not know what year Jesus was born. The Gospels suggest he was born near the end of the reign of Herod the Great. The AD system therefor takes the last year of Herod's rule as the birth year of Jesus. Because of a counting error, this year turns out to be, in our modern calendar 4 BC, not 1 AD.

SO in reality our calendar does not count from the first year of Jesus, but from the last year of Herod the little known joke is that the entire AD/BC system is actually based on the reign of a pro-roman, non-jewish king who ruled over the jews.

*edited for clarity, I hope it's clear engough now!*

 

[Iacchus32]

Originally posted by kat
SO in reality our calendar does not count from the first year of Jesus, but from the last year of Herod the little known joke is that the entire AD/BC system is actually based on the reign of a Jewish ruler

Would that be Herod? Or would that be Jesus? Sorry! ... Actually the rest of your post makes a lot of sense.

 

[megashawn]

Cool, glad someone is on top of this.

I still think we should restart the calendar at 0 in 2000 though. Make life easier on us lazy ppl.