May 13, 2014

AD, BC, BCE, CE, WC?

I've been bothered a lot lately, sort of nagging at the back of my mind, by the whole recent ( well, if you consider within a decade or so  recent ) decision to change from AD (Anno domini, or in the year of our lord)- bc ( before Christ) to CE ( common era) - BCE. ( before common era). 
And before anyone complains, it's not just that they're  doing so (blatantly) only in the name of political correctness ( and, as others have pointed out, only PC at the expense of Christianity... No ones decided to remove the word "January", for instance, even though it's name is in honor of Janus... An ancient roman god.... Which should be considered offensive to anyone not of that faith) although that bothers me, and it's not just that changing over blatantly disregards and disrespects the contribution that Christianity has made to history, ( [Christian]Gregorian monks, after all, invented the calendar and timeline system that we use around the world today) although that bugs me even more. No, what really bugs the hell out of me is why they bothered to change the calendar labels but kept the event it's based on ... What??!! Let me explain: What happened at year 0, Before Commone Era, that suddenly made everything "Common"? Christ's birth, that's what, or else what other event are they basing it on? Huh? That's so weird to me... Change the labels around, but have the actual timing be based on the year when Christ was supposed to be. 

Personally, I think if they're going to switch the labels around, in the blatant, biased, un- scientific, intellectually dishonest way that they've done it, they should just go ahead and change the freaking starting date that the whole calendar is based on too, or they're A) being intellectually and scientifically dishonest and inaccurate by not giving credit to the Gregorian monks and pope Gregor who invented the whole darned  calendar in the first place, and B) they're still not technically being politically correct because the entire timeline of the Gregorian calendar, which they still use, ( just with the labels "BCE- CE" instead of "BC-AD") has the starting point for the calendar, ( the year "0") based on the year that they supposed Christ was born. ( even if they were a little inaccurate and off by like five years or whatever, as some people nitpickingly try to point out)  Did you guys get that? The whole entire timeline is still based on the year that Jesus Christ was supposed to have been born. Oops. So much for being "politically correct".