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I kept looking for the strong points of the BCE/CE side and I couldn’t find any. It all boils down to wanting to remove religious or specifically Christian references, yet it accomplishes nothing of the sort. The reckoning point is still Christ, and all Kepler’s dating convention does is throw up a smokescreen.

I found it particularly interesting that a presumed Thelemite feels so strongly about removing references to the Christian religion given that Crowley’s work, and his goddess, Babalon, comes from the Revelation of St. John. To create something in reaction to another thing is to tie yourself to it forever.

Religion has always been integral to human civilization. One doesn’t have to practice Christianity to acknowledge that it has been foundational in shaping the world we live in. BCE/CE does nothing to remove that foundation, it only lets people pretend otherwise.

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Well I beg to differ. By saying BCE/CE one is acknowledging history and all the writing which occurred while Christianity was dominant in western culture and we can't practically rewrite or relearn countless books and dates, but we can say that the world no longer (and emphasize, that the world never did) center on Jesus only the time scale of some very important writers, in a certain part of the world.

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I prefer CE/BCE not only because we aren't ALL Christian, but it is just literally inaccurate, we have no way of knowing the actual date of Christ's life, birth or death, so saying Before Christ is just too nebulous. The Common Era is more factual and more definitve.

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I'm either in favour of the Jewish, or Abrahmic calendar... or perhaps one from Hammurabih times... Chinese maybe... or better, one derived from the age of times of the Universe... a few Billion years perhaps... I think the Buddhist calendar approximates that...

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First: There was no Year Zero. The year before Jesus’s supposed birth was 1 BC. The year of Jesus’s supposed birth was 1 AD. AD abbreviates Anno Domini, the year of our Lord.

Second: BCE/CE is a dumb way to “deChristianize” dating. The first time I saw the abbreviations, I thought they meant “Before the Christian Era/Christian Era.” That’s still the way I read it despite the fact that “CE” is supposed to denote “Common Era.”

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Hallo there!

The BC and AD dating system belongs to an earlier Age and is based on myths and medieval superstition...

History from this Age was almost sometimes written in an almost mythological fashion because it was subjective -- mostly written to fit the biases of the historian in question...and therefore [this] system was OK for the Medieval Period and for a little while after...

The BC and AD dating system is based on mythology, and therefore SUBJECTIVITY...and should therefore not be used in the so-called MODERN WORLD anymore...

The CE and BCE dating system is more secular and more OBJECTIVE than the religious BC and AD dating system, but it still uses the same ZERO point as what the BC and AD dating system is using...

It's still somewhat SUBJECTIVE, but it's better than the BC and AD dating system -- but it also doesn't [really] belong in the MODERN WORLD, anymore...

As history becomes [more] objective and scientific the dating system must also become [more] objective -- ideally...

There should be a clear distinction between history and mythology, and that should be reflected in the dating system...

Yours sincere

Pieter J (PJ)

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Thank you for this interestIng question and the various answers that supported peoples choice. I am definitely on the BCE/CE choice, with the lack of Christianity as the main reason. But I realized, reading this article and the reactions, that even with using BCE/CE, there still is a Christian reference, because of the point in time where BCE changes into CE.

So, the discussion could be about what point in time would be a good start to reference the years and time periods. Any point will have it’s proponents and deniers.

When you incorporate original eastern time frames, like the Japanese, Indian or Chinese, it will become even more elaborate and/or confusing.

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Romans 13:8-10

Love Fulfills the Law

8 Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. 9 The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,”[a] and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”[b] 10 Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.

Time for everyone to recall the words of America’s first president, George Washington, in his farewell address.

“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morali-ty are indispensable supports. … And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

What is moral code of secularists and atheists?

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Hello,

neither BC/AD nor BCE/CE is correct, because both ways of counting the years are based upon Dionysius Exiguus plot to end of the cosmic time or age, because he focused AD towards a planetary massing in the year 2000 AD in an apocalyptic way.

Please see:

The Scythian Dionysius Exiguus and His Invention of Anno Domini. Proceedings of the Second International Symposium Blagoevgrad, Neofit Rilski University Press, 2016

https://www.academia.edu/29270987/The_Scythian_Dionysius_Exiguus_and_His_Invention_of_Anno_Domini

The Calculation of Doomsday based on Anno Domini.

Scientific Culture. Journal of Applied Science & Technology to Cultural Issues. 2015

https://sci-cult.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/2-REVISED_Rothwangl_2015-1_formatted.pdf

Best regards,

Sepp Rothwangl

SEAC Fellow

calendersign@gmx.at

www.calendersign.com

https://univie.academia.edu/SeppRothwangl

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