Timwi wrote:
JAY JG wrote:
The point isn't that the measurement is inaccurate. The point is that renaming it to "CE" does not make it a different measurement. It is still based on the same Christian considerations.
When one uses the B.C. system one is able to make the rather bizarre statement that "Christ was born 4 to 6 years Before Christ". At least Before the Common Era does away with that.
No, it doesn't, it only makes it subtler. "4 to 6 years before the Common Era" would still mean "4 to 6 years before the point in time that some wackos at some point thought was the birthdate of Jesus".
I wouldn't exactly call them wackos. Research facilities at the time were rudimentary by today's standards. I don't know how long it took before it was realized that Jesus was probably born 4 years earlier, but by then the damage was done since the A.U.C. dating system had already been abandoned for some time. I suppose that the properr thing might be to advocate for a change in the calendar that reflects the fact that we are now four years later than we thought we were. This is really the year 2009! All dates in historical records and books should be changed to reflect that. (Columbus did not discover America until 1496, WWII lasted from 1943 until 1949, the Y2K panic anticipated the coming of the year 2004, etc.)
Unfortunately people might not understand the importance of such a move. There were riots when the change from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar stole 11 days from people's lives. Imagine how irrationally they will respond when we seek to shorten their lives by four years. :-)
Ec