[Aztlan] AD or CE?

[Luke Kundl Pinette]

And then there are people like me, who use CE (and BCE), as abbreviation 
for "Christian Era," though I use the long form mainly in speech.

My rationale is that having grown up in a very PC bubble "AD" just feels 
kind of strange.  But I find "Common Era," to be silly (and even more 
ethnocentric), since it's entirely dependent on the notional date of the 
birth of Christ, which has major significance only to Christian 
societies.  I guess also it feels like it makes it less about a man 
(Christ) and more about a cultural phenomenon (Christianity).  Since 
Christ's birthdate (and even his existence) are not certain, it feels 
less like a statement of fact about the historical Christ, and more a 
statement about what Christian historical tradition has been.

 I've heard other people use "Christian Era" in and many (maybe most) 
probably have different rationales.

If we really wanted to measure a common era, I'd put 1492 or 1945 AD/CE 
as Y-0 (I'd like a dozenal counting system too, but good luck with 
that).  And other people would have different opinions.  So we stick 
with what has been historical tradition for almost two millenia, and 
pretend like the labels we use do more than communicate our religious 
and political biases.

Regards,
Luke

michael ruggeri wrote:
> Mario, AD means Anno Domino or "In the year of our Lord." CE means  
> Common Era. Some folks believe that dating archaeological finds should  
> be free of any religious designation and should be more scientific in  
> its dating. Every culture has archaeologists and obviously, many of  
> them are not Christian. So there should be a dating mechanism which is  
> common to all people. CE or Common Era takes the religious term out of  
> it and makes it more neutral.
>
> BC means "Before Christ," and again, this makes sense for Christians  
> but all archaeologists are not Christian in the world. So BCE means  
> "before the common era," thus making it more neutral. Of course, we  
> are still using Christ's birth to determine when the common era begins  
> and what is before the common era. But at least, it does not sound as  
> religious and it is not imposing Christian terminology on non- 
> Christian archaeologists.
>
> Mike Ruggeri
>
>
> On Aug 21, 2009, at 7:12 PM, Mario F. Malo wrote:
>
>   
>> Recently Ive noticed people writing letters to Aztlan and more than  
>> once they have posted different initials when writing a specific  
>> date,  for instance one article put 450 AD while another put 450 CE,  
>> what gives?   Mario Malo
>>
>>
>>
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