Friday, April 6, 2012

In the year of whiny pants-wetters




Can we please, for the love of reason, stop with the CE and BCE nonsense?

I first heard about the alternative designation in High School and somehow, at 14, I was bright enough to see how moronic it was. Apparently, BCE and CE stand for either Before Christian Era or Before Common Era. This is idiotic in either case.

What exactly is common between now and, say, the year 107 A.D.? If there is a start to a common era, wouldn't it be the Industrial Revolution? And isn't even that becoming an alien age of smog and 14 hour work days compared to contemporary western life?

Nor does calling it Christian Era make any sense. I don't think we could recognize the western world as being Christian until Roman Emperor Constantine embraced Christianity in the early 4th century after purportedly seeing a giant cross in the sky. Prior to that, Christianity was an oppressed, minority religion whose practitioners were often put to death.

Even using Christ's birth to demarcate the beginning of a Christian Era makes little sense. Jesus of Nazareth didn't found his sect of Judaism until his early thirties and those who followed him considered themselves Jews. The idea that their religion was separate and distinct from Judaism took a few decades to coalesce.

The root of the change, it appears, is to be sensitive to people who aren't Christians. I only ask, do these people also get their panties twisted over the names of months and days, all of which are derived from various religions?

And for whom is the latter notion ridiculous but the former not?