re: #82 Unlike Some People

You are being very intellectual dishonest if you think that counting from a certain date is somehow equivalent or even remotely comparable to worship.

Except of course I made no such claim. What I said is that your claim of no deference is false. You’re forced to use this system which can never be entirely secular due to its roots, so you’re showing deference in any case. You’re counting from this date and not from any other date whether you like it or not, and this date has purely religious roots. So the aim is not to achieve some super-secular solution, but to use the sufficiently neutral language. While I myself prefer CE/BCE, AD/BC (in such form) are neutral enough for my tastes (you asked about my preference, remember?).

AD is not equal to spelling out the middle version, yet you claim it is.

Uh, yes it is equivalent. It means the same thing. Anno Domini means “in the year of our Lord”. The fact that it is conventional to ignore that doesn’t change that fact. The fact that you like that conventional ignorance does not suggest another conventional formula is more or less secular.

Uh, no, in no way it is equivalent to use “AD” and to spell out the whole middle version (or even just to spell out the abbreviation). You once again ignored the fact that word usage matters. It matters e.g. whether one writes “BC” or insists on spelling out “before Christ”. “The medium is the message”. The middle version is not anywhere as common as AD. You will see even atheists using AD/BC, but hardly the middle version.

You don’t really want me to explain to you what “our God Jesus Christ” means, so you are being disingenious.

Except it’s the same as saying “in the year of our Lord”, since that Lord (and God) is Jesus. So you insist that AD and the middle version have the same meaning, but object to explicit unpacking the middle version, which makes my point. Also, you’re being inconsistent, and thus disingenuous, not to mention willing to engage in name-calling over smallest things.

BTW, “the year of our Lord Jesus Christ” is listed as an alternative form of “the year of our Lord”.

And no, that does not “narrate the same thing”. Affirming the reality of Christianity having reigned supreme over historical chronology is not the same as affirming Christianity.

Except that’s not what CE denotes at all. CE is just a fig leaf over AD anyway.