What's with BCE and what does it mean?

S

science man

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I seeing people even on here write BCE instead of BC. Why is that and what does the E mean?
 
Idle Mind said:
By changing the notation from the Anno Domini notation [Before Christ (BC)/Anno Domini (AD)] to the Current Era notation, we remove religious connotations.
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gendanken said:
Because not everyone wishes to time his watch to a Jew.

Its enough that Jews sell them.
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Why is this all brand new? If I never read anything online (especially here) I would've never ran in to BCE. Only BC. I've never seen BCE written until this year actually.
 
Idle Mind said:
By changing the notation from the Anno Domini notation [Before Christ (BC)/Anno Domini (AD)] to the Current Era notation, we remove religious connotations.
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Yes, it's part of the attempt to scrub every last vestige of Christianity from our culture.
gendanken said:
Because not everyone wishes to time his watch to a Jew.
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Yet aren't the time periods defined by BCE/BC still exactly the same as the BC/AD? So we're still setting our clocks according to the birth of Christ (as estimated in the 4th century), we're just pretending we aren't. Furthermore, if we were going to design a new system, they should have stuck a year zero in there to avoid all the confusion regarding when a new century/millennium starts.
 
science man said:
when was this realized?
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There's no date in the history books for it, it was gradual. The Jews have done it this way for centuries within their own community. When the modern State of Israel was founded and its institutions began publishing scholarly papers, journals and other widely read documents, they adhered to their own standard, so the rest of the world became accustomed to seeing CE/BCE instead of AD/BC. Now that Islam (according to some observers) is on the verge of having its Renaissance and Reformation (and not a moment too soon), publications from the Islamic countries using the same conventions are finding their way to the west. There are a hundred times as many Muslims as there are Jews, so everyone had better get used to it.

Many of us atheists picked it up because we're sick of having our culture defined by a religion. I have used it routinely for years. And I'm as inconsistent as the next American, I enthusiastically celebrate Christmas and Easter, but in entirely secular ways.

But it is most definitely not a standard. In all the Western countries you will still see AD/BC.
 
Fraggle Rocker said:
There's no date in the history books for it, it was gradual. The Jews have done it this way for centuries within their own community. When the modern State of Israel was founded and its institutions began publishing scholarly papers, journals and other widely read documents, they adhered to their own standard, so the rest of the world became accustomed to seeing CE/BCE instead of AD/BC. Now that Islam (according to some observers) is on the verge of having its Renaissance and Reformation (and not a moment too soon), publications from the Islamic countries using the same conventions are finding their way to the west. There are a hundred times as many Muslims as there are Jews, so everyone had better get used to it.

Many of us atheists picked it up because we're sick of having our culture defined by a religion. I have used it routinely for years. And I'm as inconsistent as the next American, I enthusiastically celebrate Christmas and Easter, but in entirely secular ways.

But it is most definitely not a standard. In all the Western countries you will still see AD/BC.
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oh ok thanks.
 
I continue to use BC, because of a) convention, and b) the fact that it pisses people off.
 
science man said:
Why is this all brand new? If I never read anything online (especially here) I would've never ran in to BCE. Only BC. I've never seen BCE written until this year actually.
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Not so brand new.
It was standard practice when I was doing my undergrad, and that was in 1990...
 
glaucon said:
Not so brand new. It was standard practice when I was doing my undergrad, and that was in 1990.
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You will see it in academia, although not consistently. I'm sure the universities that are funded by churches still use AD/BC. But you will probably never see it in newspapers and magazines, or in business documents.
 
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