But it now turns out that some BBC committee or hierarch has decided that this nativity — notional or otherwise — can no longer be referred to by our state-funded broadcaster , in identifying whether a year is before or after the, ahem, cough, event in question. You should not underestimate the influence of this verdict. What the BBC decides, all kinds of other publishers and broadcasters will decide to follow.
Schools will snap into line, and if people protest they will be told that they are following best practice — it's what the BBC does, after all. Stars attack BBC over politically correct 'drivel'. So this is not some trivial bureaucratic thing: I object, first, because no one is asking for this change. I object because no one is offended by these terms. We talked to loads of Muslim and Jewish scholars, and none batted an eye at my usage; and it is particularly mad to think that Muslims might be offended by a reference to Jesus, when he is an important figure in Islam, and when many Muslims are baffled by this country's peculiar desire to exterminate cultural references to its Christian history.
I should stress at this point that I do not object because I want to vindicate the literal truth of the Christian religion — since I am afraid my faith is like a very wonky aerial, and I sometimes find the signal pretty scratchy. I object because it is all so darned nonsensical. There is no Eran religion, and no followers of Common.
AD, ad, CE
There was Christ, and if the BBC doesn't want to date events from the birth of Christ then it should abandon the Western dating system. Perhaps it should use the Buddhist calendar, which says that it is the 2,th year since the nirvana of Lord Buddha. This runs backwards from 1 BC. The use of BP by archaeologists, geologists, and other scientists, refers to radiocarbon ages and results from other radiometric dating techniques.
Radiometric dating techniques are those that provide absolute dates based on the decay of radioactive isotopes.
Radiocarbon dating was discovered in the s. All living organisms contain the gas Carbon 14 C14 or 14C. The half-life of an isotope like 14C is the time it takes for half of it to decay away.
In 14C every 5, years half of it is gone. Therefore, if you measure the amount of 14C in a dead organism, you can calculate out how long ago it died. Therefore a date like BP means before AD: Quite soon after radiocarbon dating was used, scientists realised that even though the dates retrieved from the method have a repeatable progression, they do not have a one-to-one match with calendar years. They discovered that radiocarbon dates are affected by the amount of carbon in the atmosphere that has fluctuated greatly in the past.
Why do people use the latter terminology? For one thing, I find it confusing. But moreover, there is only one letter of difference between the two terms, whereas with BC and AD, the terms are clearly different and I find it easier to distinguish! Wikipedia, Anno Domini article:. For example, Cunningham and Starr write that "B. Common Era notation is used in many schools and academic settings.
Later on, it was found Jesus likely wasn't born that year , but a few years earlier i. Marking it as the "Christian Era" or more commonly, the "Common Era" allows the same epoch to be used even though the best calculation for Jesus's birth has changed.
BC or BCE? The BBC's edict on how we date events is AD (absolute drivel) - Telegraph
While Christians make up a very large chunk of the world's population, they are no where near the majority. When "Christian Era" is used, it's still clear what epoch is being referred to i. Modern dates are understood in the Western world to be in the Gregorian calendar, but for older dates writers should specify the calendar used.
- BC, bc, BCE!
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- To BC or BCE? - Telegraph.
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Dates in the Gregorian calendar in the Western world have always used the era designated in English as Anno Domini or Common Era, but over the millennia a wide variety of eras have been used with the Julian calendar. BC is "before christ", whether you believe in him or not. It's just as good as the Nth year of reign of Pharaoh Whoever - doesn't require you to believe in the deity of a particular egyptian.
BC, AD, BCE, BP Abbreviation(s), Latin phrase, Meaning
Archaeologists also use BP - before present - which is confusingly set as Astronomers of course have the best solution - just count days. While this issue always seems to get mired in arguments about political correctness, I'd offer another perspective. It's very strange that going across the arbitrary division line between two years also requires a change in the language of abbreviation.
Also, traditional convention says that BC comes after a date e.