Now before this blog gets quickly misinterpreted, mentally Sherroded I'll try to frame this in as objective a way as I can. You're a space visitor, you've been around for a few weeks now and you notice that if someone is writing out a check today they'll put the date at Sept. 14, 2010. Now you do a little research into their calendar system (yes Saty I know all about the Chinese calendar so before you get started) and it seems to be almost universally agreed upon, in fact it's not even controversial that on a worldwide basis today is Tuesday, Sept. the 14th, 2010. So there was BC/AD, Before Christ and Anno Domini or "The Year of Our Lord.". Raquel Welch was 1,000,000 years BC with her perfect cave hairstyle and shaved legs but you notice that this Christman, nobody else even comes close to his historical importance. I mean to rejigger the entire calendar system of the World, dividing all of Time and History into before his birth and after his birth, well we don't do that with Buddha or anybody else (BB- Before Buddha, AC - After Confucius) which is not to put the Buddha down but as a space visitor you come to the conclusion that this historical event of Christ's birth, life and death was so important, so pivotal to civilization that there must be some kind of worldwide consensus that still exists to this day in favor of that one man over All The Others. Do you personally know anybody who when writing out a check says "I ain't writing that" when jotting down today's date? In fact this is inarguable, has nothing to do with my personal views as a Christian but is simply the way we do things, an objective fact and I don't even hear atheists or nontheists protest the point.
OK, now attack!!! I've only two responses you are going to hear: What day is today? and Y2K.
You pretty much got that right. Back in the day, all the dating systems were confusing at best.
ReplyDeleteBy the mid-first millenium, most nation states were Christian, and the Gregorian system became
universal in much of Europe by 800 AD (or CE, if you prefer). Works
very well and is universal.
A few critical scholars still argue about the fact that there was no zero year betwixt 1BC and 1AD, or that the year of Christ's birth was off a bit, or not. Now, what's this BB-Before Buddha stuff, huh? I guess if you're a minorah type,
happy 6th of Tishrei,
5771...
Very Good Post, Z. I Like it!!!
ReplyDeleteHmmm, you might give some people an idea to change the calendar now.
ReplyDeleteWhen you stop to think about this this is pretty profound, that despite all the different religions out there we've settled on a Christocentric calendar system that is pretty universal the world over. There is no movement afoot to change the calendar system, none that I am aware of. Despite all the various faith systems out there we vastly give preference it would seem to the Christocentric calendar in terms of international commerce and trade, politics and just in everyday communications. Ahmadinejad, Putin, Rome and Obama all agree what day it is. Y2K, basically the world's computer systems wired into this Christocentric framework although nothing happened but we risked it anyway, worldwide calamity based on the year of Christ's birth. Pretty amazing!
ReplyDeleteOur lives should be Christocentric, so seems logical to me.
ReplyDeleteI thought this thread would generate more heat but I see the opposition is at a loss. Can't argue with facts.
ReplyDeleteIt would be too Hard to Change this even if the Atheists wanted to.
ReplyDeleteThe reason, of course, that this calendar is the one in use is because the Roman Church was exercising its despotic tyranny over the civilized world and essentially forced everyone to do it that way.
ReplyDeleteMany large companies use the Julian calendar in their daily work (I used to work for one that did) and that revolves around the day of the year and the year, which eliminates the confusion that sometimes results between month and day (in other countries the day is often put first instead of the month, as in 10/9/10 being September 10, 2010).
So the point is that far from it being some kind of consensus, it happened because the Roman Church was essentially the most powerful political player on the scene at the time, and, well, we know what happened to people who took on the Vatican.
You as usual have the scholarly angle and I thank you but the whole point is that this must not bother any people since this Christocentric system is still in use. If its background is so evil why isn't there a movement to change it? Vast majority of folks seem fine with it.
ReplyDelete