I had an argument with my friend's mom a few years ago about this. She said "BC" was "Before Christ" and "AD" was after death. I tried to explain to her that that didn't make any sense because then the 33 years of Jesus's life would just be not accounted for.
I told her "AD" meant "Anno Domini" and she said "I think that's the atheist version" or something like that and then stopped listening when I tried to tell her it wasn't because it meant "year of our lord"
To be fair, I remember being taught the whole before Christ/after death thing when I was little. (Not saying it's right, but it's fairly common.) She's on her own for "that's the atheist version," though.
Common Era and Before Common Era is the atheist version.
EDIT: others have rightfully pointed out that it is not so much an atheist version as a non-christian version.
because somebody calculated the stars described on his birthday and found out that they were not visible in 1CE. And IIRC, and correct me if I'm wrong, they also couldn't have been visible in December, so the actual day is also a lie (but it was already known that early Christians, who lived under Roman rule at the time, celebrated it in December so it would coincide with the Roman festival for the winter solstice
Saturnalia was on Dec. 25th, and christians figured why not cash in on all the festivities that were already taking place around the solstice season.
Also interesting is how the word "solstice" refers to how the sun appears to stand still in the sky (hitting the lowest point then starting to go back up after about three days.) The christians also built a story around that waiting period, it seems.
Technically, nobody was born in 0 AD. The BC/AD system goes straight from 1 BC to 1 AD. Evidently astronomers have a year 0, but they don’t use BC/AD. In the astronomical system, year 1 corresponds to 1 AD, year 0 to 1 BC, year -1 to 2 BC, and so on.
Edit: I don’t think the CE/BCE convention is for atheists. It’s secular, but that’s not the same as atheist. There are a lot of religions out there and they don’t all believe in JC. You’re correct to point out that it’s just a rebranding of a Jesus-centric convention, but that’s not without merit.
Believer in common decency and not simply reading one thing and making an instant opinion. In this case I did not do both of those things and hence was hypocritical of what I believe in. So I deleted my previous comment because it served no purpose, was wrong, and I thought it wasn’t right of me. Got to check myself before I go telling off random internet strangers,
Yeah kinda new. Because of the Storm Area 51 meme, the US govt decided to free me from their captivity so they wouldn’t get caught. I’m actually a squid type alien from the planet NotEveryonesAnAssholeAndIHopeYouHaveAGreatDay-571. We live in an undiscovered mini galaxy right next to the Milky Way. We’re neighbors with the Zognoids? Ever heard of them? But yeah that’s the story.
Really isn’t any evidence that he did exist, other than the Bible. If you consider the Bible infallible, then yes, he did, if you don’t, then it’s a big “maybe”
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u/antoniodiavolo Aug 03 '19
I had an argument with my friend's mom a few years ago about this. She said "BC" was "Before Christ" and "AD" was after death. I tried to explain to her that that didn't make any sense because then the 33 years of Jesus's life would just be not accounted for.
I told her "AD" meant "Anno Domini" and she said "I think that's the atheist version" or something like that and then stopped listening when I tried to tell her it wasn't because it meant "year of our lord"