re: #127 Walter L. Newton

CE is a scholarly term which means “Common Era,” not Christian era. Where did you get that from? I’m curious.

BCE is also used by non-sectarians, standing for “Before Common Era.”

This is one of my pet peeves. People are free, of course, to label epochs any way they see fit, but this particular one is nothing more than a relabeling aimed at removing a religious reference from what is fundamentally a religious artifact of history. If you’re that unhappy with it, at least replace it with some different period; what, after all, is the significance of 1 CE? Why mark the beginning of your religion-free period with that particular point in time?

While you’re at it, couldn’t you at least do the sensible thing and add a Year 0 to the whole scheme? Preceding the year 1 AD with the year 1 BC is a major annoyance when it comes to calendrical calculations; it introduces a discontinuity in the midst of an otherwise continuous flow of time. Why not start the whole, Christ-free system on January 1, 4713 BC and count forward from there, the way astronomers do?

If there’s no logical, practical reason to adopt a different epoch, let’s leave well enough alone. We’re talking about history, after all, and the common names of the epochs currently in use are part of that history, as annoying as that is to some people.