I just learned that we are no longer using the time tested AD (the year of our lord) and BC (Before Christ) when talking about time.

What in the world has the world come to when we have to be politically correct with time, now we have BCE (before common era) for the time before Christ and CE (common Era) to cover the time formerly known as AD. Does anyone see the irony of the change, BCE and CE are still based on the exact same moments in time and still revolved around the religious events of that time. How superficially stupid is that? If we really wanted to change what we call time than a half assed approach that only changes the names is truly the height of stupidity, if you are so offended by history, then change the whole damn thing, ridiculous. When Dionysius Exiguus setup the BC and AD in 525 CE, to use the correct term, he was determining the correct date for Easter under the direction of Pope St. John the first so the entire church could be in sync. Dionysius decided to start his 532 year cycle from the year associated with the foundation of Rome. At that time, Christ’s birth was supposed to have occurred immediately preceding the year of the founding of Rome. Today, based on historical evidence relating to Herod and astronomical evidence relating to eclipses and star novas, most historians believe Christ was actually born a few years earlier. Dionysius did the best he could with what he had.

It took nearly 400 years after when Dionysius devised the calendar for it to reach common usage. In combination with the Julian Calendar system which determines the beginning of months and years this continued until 1582 AD. That is when, in all his pompousness, Pope Gregory XIII attempted to improve upon the Julian Calendar and introduced, you guessed it, the Gregorian Calendar, mainly because we figured out that a year is not exactly 365 days long. It is actually 365 and a quarter days long and that is why we have a leap year every 4 years. This new way also kept the seasons from shifting one day every four years. It was crazy and something had to be done and who better than the Pope himself to step in! The widespread use of the Gregorian calendar and the use of BC and AD, throughout the common era, came about thanks to the colonization practices of Europe and economic pressures of a world-wide economy led by Europe and the United States. This seems to be gradually changing as more and more academic writers prefer the use of CE rather than AD, what? Prefer to use CE instead of AD. AD and BC have been around long enough to be ubiquitous, an analogy would be I would prefer to call a steak a moon rock because I feel that cows have been greatly misunderstood by man and that bovine persecution has forever changed my mind about how I feel about what I call a slab of cow. I mean what about the vegetarians we can not offend them by calling a steak a steak. Or using my definition - my petty little life is so pathetic that I feel the need to attempt to change history and a commonly used name of something just because it MAY offend someone, that is stupid, plain and simple.

Little did I know that the legal code of the United States does not specify an official national calendar. It just happens that we use the Gregorian calendar in the United States because of an act of Parliament of the United Kingdom in 1751, which specified use of the Gregorian calendar in England and its colonies. I was surprised to learn that the term "Common Era" was used as early as the 1800s, the phrase "common era", in lower case, was frequently used in a generic sense, not necessarily to refer to the Christian Era, but to any system of dates in common use throughout a civilization. For example "the common era of the Mahometans, or the common era of the foundation of Rome. More recently the move to BCE and CE is based on an alternative to the more overtly religious "AD" and "BC", since "Common Era" does not explicitly make use of religious titles for Jesus, such as "Christ" and "Lord", which are used in the AD/BC notation. How many of you really even think about BC as Before Christ and AD as Anno Domini anyway – I think I was in high school before I learned AD did not mean After Death anyway. The whole thing seems so preposterous, it is nothing more than a euphemism that does not alter the pivotal year 1 that is still based on the life of Jesus, I see it as nothing more than another attempt at political correctness gone wild.

So we are going to take something that has for hundreds of years be the de facto global standard, so much so that it is recognized by international institutions such as the United Nations and the Universal Postal Union and shit can the whole thing in the name of political correctness. I have found that the CE notation has been adopted in several non-Christian cultures, by many scholars in religious studies and other academic fields, and by others wishing to be sensitive to non-Christians. Wishing to be sensitive to non-Christians – what kind of outrageous nonsense it that? I consider myself a non-Christian but I have no need to attempt to rewrite the history of time, that is what it is called AD and BC! I suppose if you are hostile about it, the Ethic of Reciprocity (the Golden Rule) suggests, and you should heed, that one should not intentionally cause unnecessary pain to other humans and we should treat others as we would wish to be treated. Well then if you do the math only one out of every three humans on earth is a Christian, Hummmm. That is what lead some theologians and other authors to feel that non-religious, neutral terms like CE and BCE would be less offensive to the non-Christian majority. I am not sure I understand, or believe for that matter, that by forcing a Hindu, for example, to use AD and BC might be seen by some as coercing them to acknowledge the supremacy of the Christian God. I suppose it could be seen as analogous to the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance. The most recent version of this pledge includes the phrase: "Under God." Imagine what a Wiccan or many Buddhists and strong Atheists might feel when having to recite those words. Then for a moment we need to consider how a Christian might feel if the pledge read "Under Buddha" or "Under Allah." HMMMMM

Seems like most every issue in our lives – VERY COMPLICATED. I think, through our evolutionary path, we have somehow developed a much much thinner skin than we used to have. I am not sure what the answer to that is but I for one am going to start calling my steak a moon rocks and I will continue to say AD and BC. I will however start to refer to their meaning as “Almighty Duane” and “Baloney Cheese” which is better than “Baloney Cheese Extra” for BCE and “CoHite Experiment” for CE.

Did you even know it changed?