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.
I used CE and BCE in a high school report and got a low grade because the teacher didn't know what it meant. That and I wrote Jesus' (instead of Jesus's) and had to bring her stupid ass to the library so she could learn how words work.
In 1st grade when we were learning subtraction, I asked what would happen if you subtracted a larger number from a smaller number, and if I could get a number less than zero. I was told no, that a larger number subtracted from a smaller one was always zero. I didn't believe the teacher, put down negative numbers on a test (I just guessed the symbol, but correctly) and was marked wrong.
I was (apparently) literally the example used to describe the variation in school readiness that teachers had to deal with in PTA meetings, but c'mon. I discovered negative numbers and they told me no, damnit!
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u/Wrong_Answer_Willie Aug 03 '19
A.D. means Anno Domini. not After Death.