h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Changing over to a new calendrical system would be a nightmare of several orders of magnitude worse than the Y2k problem. I don't care that our current dating system is based on the birth of some crusty old religious figure. A name is just a name. My name is Christopher, but I attach no religious significance to it. Things/events/ideas get named after people all the time, but we don't go about renaming them willy nilly just to prevent offending people that probably don't care about it either.

I think the easiest thing is to keep things as they are. It ain't broke, so don't fix it.

While I wouldn't take such a hard line opinion, I agree that even such a small change to the Gregorian calendar would likely be more trouble than it's worth. As an agnostic person with a scientific mind, I find the system a bit quaint and old fashioned but quite unobjectionable.

Each time I've seen use of CE/BCE, it has been necessary to include a lengthy footnote explaining what the letters stand for and why they have been used. In my opinion, this is hardly 'accessible' to the average reader. Rather, it is pompously academic in most circumstances, with an exception given where the author's central goal is to deemphasize the influence of the Christian religion on modern thought.

In cases where the subject matter has little or nothing to do with Christianity, history, or scientific objectivity, I don't see the point.

universal calendars are good for all and acceptable in tibetan caledars the same type of year comes every 12 years so one can really elebrate birth-day after a period of 12 years in eastern ladakh

I don't see that such a changeover would be difficult
Less so from changing from old to 'decimal' money or from imperial to metric measures
It won't bother me one way or the other but I can't believe people would find it that difficult to understand that BC had changed to BCE and AD to CE

The change from bc/ad to bce/ce wouldn't be that big except that it would need to be changed in every history book etc that is in print. Of course changeing to a completely different system would just be confusing. After all every historic text would use the old system making the change, if nothing else, anoying to students.

I would also like to add something else, seeing how the bce/ce would be seen as politically correct. It would only seem so to English native speakers. At the moment AD is the same in every single language (since it is a latin word). CE would only apply to english languages(and perhaps by some strange accident to some other ones). I personly find it a lot more offencive to have people claim that english is more important than other languages than that AD is named after some dead guy.
Also, most people don't even know what AD means(even in christian countries) so why change it.
And has anyone ever asked if people from other religions find it offencive(afterall, I have never heard, for example, moslims try to use a different term). Don't force opinions on people...

Rod

It wouldn't mean that existing books would have to be withdrawn, just that new ones would have the new date system. How confusing would it be?

It would of course be ridiculous to use BCE/CE in non-English books. They would use the equivilent in their own language. Not that difficult.

As for Muslims using a different system they do. Their years are dated from some event in the life of Mohammed, forget which.

I'm not forcing opinions on anyone. As I said this isn't important to me. I just find it annoying when people try and make up problems that aren't really there.

I think you've hit the nail on the head there. Someone is trying to fix a problem that isn't really there at all.

It strikes me as a bit condescending to leave the rest of the world with BC/AD while switching to BCE/CE in the culture that insisted on BC/AD to begin with. I understand wanting to make amends, but it may also send the message to some in other cultures that we seek to deny our culture's past.

It's not so much that I think it would be difficult to change the system, if there were a societal mandate to do so. The problem, I think, is that there is no such mandate. I can't imagine anyone convincing all the authors and publishers of history books to use the new system, for example. Some would simply refuse.

The inevitable consequence is that those seeking the alternative create a second system rather than fixing the original one. Now kids get to learn new terms, and this means the full meaning of both will have to be explained to them. Ironically, more people will become aware of (and perhaps upset about) BC/AD due to this now necessary education.

It's good that we're discussing what to do. Both sides clearly have fair arguments. I just think the burden to convince everyone else lies with those who want a change.

I agree that changing things to BCE/CE wouldn't really solve anything
After all we would still be dating things from a single religious event
I imagine any Muslim or other non-Christian offended by the present system wouldn't find the change to be much of an improvement

Jesus Christ is a prophet in Islam. It doesn't offend Muslims (having just asked one) that we use our current calendar based upon his birth. There is an Islamic calendar that is used which dates from when Islam was created (their year is about 1450ish) but I think the concensus here (where I work) is that it doesn't really matter where we base our calendar's epoch, and we may as well keep on using the current one (regardless of it's name) rather than try to introduce a new one, which itself would open a can of worms. Where would you start the new calendar? There would be a whole bunch of people all shouting that they knew where we should now start! How do you choose between them? The whole problem would repeat in a few hundered years anyway, when peoples tastes change.

Let's just leave it be, and get on with some -actual- problems!