(sorry for once again diving into this debate)
And I'm one of those non-Christians who feels that BC/AD is more appropriate. We use BC/AD in normal conversation. This is one of those things where, if the typical Wikipedia reader were to see "BCE", he would wonder "what the hell is BCE?". I certainly wondered that the first several times I saw it. I see it as a sad sign of political correctness that is creeping into our content, but I'm in the minority (and yes, I'm also aware of the fact that Jesus was likely actually born between 4 and 6 BC).
BC/AD has been in use for centuries. Why wipe out history in the space of a year or two? I don't even know who, when, or how BC/BCE came to replace BC/AD, and it's certainly not in widespread use.
On 9/5/06, Carl Peterson carlopeterson@gmail.com wrote:
I'm one of the Christians who feels that BCE is more appropriate (though I still use BC/AD in common conversation). My reason, however, is that if one looks at the historical context of Jesus' life (things like the reign of Herod), you'd find that he was actually born approx. 4-6 BCE, which if we use BC/AD convention means that Jesus was born a few years "Before Christ." So, I support BCE more from a standpoint of language precision. By using (B)CE for the date convention, it removes tying the dating system to a specific event, such that any evidence which might effect the actual timing of events does not invalidate the system.
Carl
On 9/5/06, Guettarda guettarda@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/5/06, Akash Mehta draicone@gmail.com wrote:
Yes, but at the same time we must respect that everyone has varied religious beliefs, and I wouldn't be surprised if around about half of users supported BC, while the other half did not.
While this is true, the division was not solely along religious lines - many people who identified themselves Christian, myself included, feel in the half that supported BCE/CE on the basis of NPOV. The problem with accepting a POV in dating systems is that we would have to support ALL dating systems. Only supporting BC/AD and BCE/CE is to codify systemic bias. However, adding other dating systems isn't easy, because lunar calendars (for example) don't match precisely with solar ones. So if we allowed a user to pick a preferences of say, the Islamic calendar or the old
Russian
calendar, many year-only dates would become ambiguous.
However, you have a
point, NPOV means BCE.
BC means "Before Christ", and that (obviously) refers to Jesus of Nazareth. So if you say "before Christ" in reference to him, you are asserting
that
Jesus is the Messiah (Christ is the Greek version of the word). Similarly, if you say "in the Lord's year" and the reference is unequivocally to Jesus, then you are asserting that Jesus is Lord (which, in this context, has come to mean God)
Then again, must we assert that Jesus is the
Messiah/God? We must merely assert that he is christ and that the calendar is based around his birth (which it certainly appears to be, if he existed when he supposedly did).
As above, Christ means Messiah, so you can't separate the two. On the other hand, BCE (before the common era) and CE (common era) meet the
requirement
of NPOV by describing the current state of affairs in which the dating system is based around the birth of Jesus, without actually asserting
that
he is the Messiah or God.
On 9/5/06, Guettarda guettarda@gmail.com wrote:
Actually one of the major issues in the dispute is whether BC/AD
violates
NPOV because it requires Wikipedia to make an assertion the Jesus is
the
Messiah/God. BCE/CE merely describes the condition, and thus does
what
the
NPOV policy asks.
On 9/5/06, Akash Mehta draicone@gmail.com wrote:
Go figure :) I suppose thats all you can put in an article like
MoS
anyway. I personally think any policy article that doesn't change regularly (i.e. no voting pages, no listings and relistings)
shouldn't
go over 10kb for readability's sake. Anything more is just too
much
content for one page. And there's the added advantage that mailing list users don't need to abbreviate policy :)
On 9/5/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 05/09/06, Akash Mehta draicone@gmail.com wrote:
> "whatever it is now, leave it kthx." > that must be the most concise decision ever :)
I am simplifying greatly ;-)
- d.
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