BC, AD/BCE, CE

[Denis Cavanagh]

This is an issue that is explosive to some (Mainly Christians of a particularly evangelical streak) and irrelevant to others but still, I think, warrants a discussion. Do we have an official dating system, and if not, why not?

[Aleta Curry]

This is an issue that is explosive to some (Mainly Christians of a particularly evangelical streak) and irrelevant to others but still, I think, warrants a discussion. Do we have an official dating system, and if not, why not?

Actually, no, 'Christians of a particularly evangelical streak' you speak of simply take e.g. 'BCE' to mean 'Before the Christian Era'.

Short answer:  because we've got too much to do and it's not worth the hassle.

We have a discussion thread on this somewhere, Den, the consensus was 'use what you like'.

[Derek Harkness]

The old thread is here http://forum.citizendium.org/index.php/topic,916.15.html

[Tom Morris]

I think that BCE/CE should become common practice. We are aiming for a scholarly encyclopedia, and that seems to be current scholarly practice.

Anyway, if I were writing "AD" - Anno Domini - it would be in the year of our Lord - I would be presuming that the reader is a Christian, or maybe the reader would presume that the writer is a Christian. What if my 'Lord' is someone quite different from Jesus Christ? It may be "in the year of our Lord, Immanuel Kant" - in which case, the dating would be off by quite a significant amount.

Also, the Common Era is actually different from the purported life of Christ - the evidence suggests that Jesus was born after year zero, instead - according to Wikipedia - in 7-2 BCE. If you use 'BC' terminology, then Jesus Christ was born before Jesus Christ. Sorry? That doesn't make sense. Use Common Era terminology and that problem goes away.

See http://www.google.com/search?q=common+era+site%3A.edu for instances of 'Common Era' on .edu sites

Similarly, many standards efforts that have worked on date formats for computers specify 'Common Era' phrasing.

[Denis Cavanagh]

This is an issue that is explosive to some (Mainly Christians of a particularly evangelical streak) and irrelevant to others but still, I think, warrants a discussion. Do we have an official dating system, and if not, why not?

Actually, no, 'Christians of a particularly evangelical streak' you speak of simply take e.g. 'BCE' to mean 'Before the Christian Era'.

Short answer:  because we've got too much to do and it's not worth the hassle.

We have a discussion thread on this somewhere, Den, the consensus was 'use what you like'.

I was actually thinking of Conservapedia, a Creationist blog who object to the use of 'before the Common Era' quite stridently!