(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(a)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(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 9/5/06, Akash Mehta <draicone(a)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(a)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(a)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(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On 05/09/06, Akash Mehta <draicone(a)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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