Posted on 06/15/2006 5:05:48 PM PDT by xzins
I know many may feel attached to the term Before Christ (BC), but let's face it. It's a much bigger world than it was 400 years ago, and we need to acknowledge that there are other religions and cultures besides us WASPs and American-European Catholics.
I don't think it is an "attack" on Christianity as others have implied, any more than it is an "attack" on every other religion when we expect the world to conform to one calendar.
Really? They already do.
Despite the quaint Jewish and Chinese calendars used for internal purposes, all the world conforms to the Gregorian calandar.
Maybe we should copy the French Revolutionaries and declare it to be the year one.
Why be hypocritical and use the same calendar, but deny what the numbers have always meant (and continue to mean)?
"I haven't seen BC/AD in a scholarly work in a long time."
Really? I have never seen CE/BCE used in my life. Only even heard about it about a year ago, and I read a lot. I think you're living in a fantasy world.
Well I do go to school in a town which Freepers have called "The City of Evil," so maybe you are right in a sense, lol..
But still, I have recently taken some anthropology courses, the assigned readings (mostly papers from peer-reviewed journals) for which never used BC and AD. My experience may not be typical, but I suspect that at least in universities, it is.
History Channel became insufferable ages ago. When they start interviewing Japanese officers on how the US wanted war with them, I barf. They should call it the "Liberal History Channel."
There's nothing more scholarly about using one label over another, it was just an observation.
As for the rest.. I think the spirit of your "secular materialism" remark is true, if not the particulars. I doubt athiests/agnostics hate Christianity; they more likely just disbelieve it and thus think it unworthy of their acknowledgement.
Never knew there was a political divide over 1930s geopolitics :).
If they don't belive in God,does He believe in them?
For the most part you're probably right at a public level. Disdain is probably all that can officially be displayed in public. Hatred doesn't look good in the media in most cases.
At a personal level, though, one has to define hatred. Hatred is a thorough, emotional rejection and opposition. I think they're there.
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