[WikiEN-l] Re: Shouldn't we change BC->BCE?

[Daniel Mayer]

On Sunday 24 November 2002 04:00 am, Eclecticology wrote:
> I prefer BC because it's shorter than BCE.  
>
> As much as I know the origins of "BC" and its relationship to the life
> of Jesus, my atheistic sensitivities are not offended by its use.  "BCE"
> has always struck me as affectatiously hyper-correct.

I agree. I'm also an atheist (or at least a highly skeptical agnostic) and am 
more offended by efforts to do away for BC than with the fact that BC stands 
for "Before Christ". The whole effort is stupid and silly IMO - it is like 
trying to reform a criminal by only changing their name. Rubbish. 

What is really needed is a better system that has some meaningful starting 
point such as the establishment of the first human agricultural society. But 
since we can't possibly pin down an exact year for such a thing I don't think 
it is at all possible (and if it were there would invariably be later 
research that finds an even earlier society). So that leaves us with the 
Christan calendar. IMO pretending it isn't is just pure delusion (that 
doesn't mean we should use AD - AD is overtly POV and not needed to 
distinguish from BC dates). 

> Nevertheless, if the author of an article wants to use "BCE" or "CE" in
> his own article, I would be inclined to treat it as an option in the
> same way that we deal with American/British spellings.  Where a person
> does use "AD", however, I would treat it as wrong to put it after the
> year number.

I haven't seen many cases of the use of BCE or CE in Wikipedia. BC is still 
comfortably the dominant usage and since there aren't any pressing POV issues 
with it we should stay with it.  

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

payment for this post
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