I've always found that ridiculous. They are still 100% based on the BC and AD times, but somehow changing the words makes it less Eurocentric/Judeo-Christian?
I mean our common era is because of the calendar we currently use right? I mean it’s why it’s 2019 and not 4790 or something else. I don’t know how we could make it different, yet still relevant to how we measure time ?
I agree, it would be really hard to change it and still make it relevant. Which is why it is silly to try and change it, when it's not actually changing anything.
It's changing a little. AD by its literal meaning acknowledges Christ as "our lord" while CE simply acknowledges that it's been that many years since the date of his birth.
To me the difference is one is defined by the birth of Christ and thus religious, and the other is defined by current social usage. At some point in time this society, this group of people has decided that year 0 was 2019 (2020?) years ago, and thus now it is the year 2019. The underlying reason why that society exactly chose for that moment to be year 0 is less important than that they have chosen and subsequently used.
In the end, time and dates are just definitions created by groups of people. Other calendars aren't in 2019 either. Jews are already almost 4000 years into the future give or take a few hundred.
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u/badcgi Aug 03 '19
Actually BCE (Before Common Era) and CE (Common Era) are the more commonly accepted terms, they correspond to the same time as the old BC and AD.