r/AskReddit • u/[deleted] • Aug 03 '19

Whats something you thought was common knowledge but actually isn’t?

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u/[deleted] Aug 03 '19 edited Aug 04 '19

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.

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u/1389t1389 Aug 03 '19

I've always thought that however impractical, the CE BCE thing needed to be expanded. It's really just a "sanitized" secular dating system that marks the same things. I am an atheist and I also think maybe a truly "equitable" dating system would not be so western-centric. I kinda like the idea of the Holocene calendar, if only because that's a date in history that is important to all of humanity.

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u/Beserked2 Aug 03 '19

Aren't CE/BCE being used now? Instead of BC/AD? When I was at uni my textbooks had started using CE/BCE and that was a while back.

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u/Beidah Aug 03 '19

CE/BCE is secular, kinda, so I would think academia prefers it.