BCE
on October 14, 2012 at 12:01 am*pinches bridge of nose with thumb and forefinger*
In case yesterday’s Rebecca St. James poster didn’t clue you in, I was an adorable little fundie back in 1997, and all of the overactive persecution complex that implies. Â Look at me, striking back at secularism!
This strip was the first I’d ever received feedback for. Â A professor or a T.A. of some stripe tried to explain to me via email that nobody was out to get me. Â It was a really long email and it countered an entire lifetime’s worth of ingrained beliefs, and so I didn’t pay it much heed. Â Whatever, mister guy, you think you know so much just because you study things. Â I’ll have you know that my paranoia is powered by THE LORD JESUS CHRIST, thank you very much.
EDIT: Seeing some of the comments below, I think the Wikipedia article for Common Era would be a good read. Â Hint: S’not got a lot to do with atheists.
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Well at least you got better…
I’m doing away with the Christian-dating system alltogether. No, not Christian Mingle dot kom, where Christians go to boink… that other one: the one that tells us it’s 2012 AD or 2012 CE and stuff. My new system is based around the age of Earth. It’s now the year 4,550,000,007.
Future conversations using my system:
“This butt taco kit is still fresh! It doesn’t expire ’til March 4,550,000,008. Don’t throw it out!”
If you’re dealing with human history, it might make more sense to set Year Zero to the creation of the Roman Republic, around 550 BCE. Or maybe the split, which is pretty close to 0 anyway.
Only for European/possibly some Mediterranean history. Even then you could easily argue for sometime in the Greek classical period or ancient Mesopotamia.
Screw you secularism! I bite my thumb at thee!
~ Danny
…Why does Joe care? He’s Jewish.
That’s what always bothered me about this comic the most. It’s kind of in-character for Danny at this point, but Joe looks so scandalized… why? There’s no way he would give a crap.
Ah, here we go.
http://itswalky.tumblr.com/post/33547660883/the-thing-that-bothers-me-about-that-comic-isnt-even
I also like the interpretation provided in that link; that Joe is making fun of Danny and it just goes over his head.
It’s annoying when your teacher docks you points for a change that you never saw until you saw a -5 on your paper xP
“Common” in this case refers to the fact that that particular numbering system is commonly used. The transition from one numbering system to the other typically throws people, who grew up on BC-AD, which is why Joe cares. Most people don’t even think about the Christian implications until it’s pointed out to them, hence why I think this comic is still in-character for Joe.
PS nice Shortpacked reference.
I was wondering if anyone was gonna get that!
yeah, I’ve been wondering when the religious affiliation of some of the characters was decided. Because if I remember right the first mention of non-christian affiliation wasn’t for some time
I’m not even Christian and I think the whole CE/BCE stuff is politically-correct silliness. “Before Christ” is more accurate anyway. There’s no common era and certainly no “Christian era” that happened to spontaneously arise right then.
That’s assuming that Jesus was a real person and not an amalgamation of various stories of a bunch of people.
Better then the Jewish dates, counting from the “Creation of the world”
Um, no. Jewish calendars go from, if I remember correctly from Hebrew school, the day Abraham became the first Jew. Not necessarily more accurate but definitely closer to 6000 years ago than the beginning of the world.
Sorry, you don’t remember correctly. http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/526875/jewish/Years.htm
It’s from the alleged beginning of the world. And 3763 BC would be waaaay too early for Abraham.
(Note: wikipedia says the calendar actually starts from one year before the creation of the world. I dunno.)
I’m kinda curious now. Gonna shoot an email to my Rabbi. Even if it’s not correct I’m kinda wondering what, exactly, was in the curriculum. Could’ve sworn Abraham was involved somehow.
Well, according to tradition – the creation of the world all started from this one rock, which was also were Abe tried to sacrifice his son to the voices in his head and later the Temple was build and nowdays there’s the Dome of the Rock there. Maybe that’s what got you confused
Except “Before Christ” isn’t even all that accurate; Herod the Great is believed to have died in 4 BC, so if the Jesus stories have any accuracy Jesus must have been born before 4 years Before Christ.
And “AD” means “Anno Domini”, or “Anno nostri Domini”, “in the year of our Lord”. For the 2/3 of the human race for human Jesus is not Lord, that’s a bit awkward.
The general best guess pits His birth at somewhere between 6 and 4 BCE (inclusive) – though, since He’s supposed to have been born during a census, 6 CE is also a possibility (that’s during the reign of Herod Antipas, the ruler of Judea when Jesus was crucified).
And ‘Common Era’ is completely accurate – thanks to Europe’s influence, the whole world uses the Christian-based calendar – sometimes side-by-side with other calendars – the Japanese still use their Imperial dating, Israel uses the Jewish calendar, much of the Arab world uses the Islamic calendar (and Jews and Muslims still set their holidays by the old calendars) – but, everybody uses it.
Israel uses both the hebrew and “Christian” calendar, and the latter is definitely more important in day to day matters.
To clarify, yeah, that’s what I meant by side-by-side.
I just checked my Roomies! collection and yep, you skipped a comic. But it was just a gag that Calvin and Hobbes already did anyway, so it doesn’t matter I guess.
I think he re-arranged the order for some things to make more sense. So that comic may still come up.
How is “Common Era” less offensive than “Before Christ”? It implies the christian dating system is the default one, which is obviously false. “Before Christ is somewhat innacurrate (Jesus was born around -6) but as an atheist and a historian I dont find it particularly offensive.
The people who coined the name were mostly thinking about Europe, yes. The implicit eurocentrism was why I was warned against using the BCE/CE terminology when I was studying anthropology.
Except it kind of is in the Western world.
easier than forcing out a new year system. Maybe we can use U.C.
So. Danny is the guy I make faces at in Anthropology class.
… I’m not really surprised, actually.
I’ve reread Roomies a few times, but I’ve always breezed over this comic without understanding it. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out that “politically correct” was supposed to be the bad part.
Fun fact: In my country, it’s called “Before our era”, removing it more-or-less from icky religious and hegemonic undertones, instead inspiring a conformist mentality. You just can’t win.
You said that it doesn’t have a lot to do with Atheists but it does have a lot to do with non-Christians
Ah, tne strip that made me shake my head and say “what is wrong with this dweeb?”. Granted, I started reading after It’s Walky finished, but I wasn’t aware of the total shift.
After seeing the Wikipedia article, I now want to date everything as “VE” or “BVE,” and claim the V is for “Venereal.”
For reals: I completely misunderstood Danny’s intentions the first time I read this. This is sincerely blowing my mind how I had drawn completely wrong conclusions about him…
Yep. When I first read this about a decade ago I interpreted it as Joe being a dumbass and Danny rolling his eyes at him, probably because that’s how the character dynamic was set up.
Most of the other strips weren’t particularly religious (or were subtle enough that I didn’t even notice). That the writer was a fundie went completely over my head.
Having grown up with a Jewish upbringing, I always assumed it had nothing to do with making atheists happy, and everything to do with making Jews happy.
And it turns out I was more or less right!
Bah, either way it’s an arbitrary point of division that serves only to avoid changing the current calendars.
I had the Sherwood Oaks/ECC one-two punch going for a while. Then I came out. (This will make sense to Willis if no-one else.)
If it’s any consolation, I just found this strip completely incomprehensible.
“What was the first ‘naughty word?’ ‘Common Era?’ That makes no sense. ‘Christ?’ Why would Danny consider that use of ‘Christ’ to be equivalent to taking the Lord’s name in vain? Or is he saying ‘if the POLITICALLY CORRECT people have their way, Joe, you will be forced to say only ‘gosh,’ thereby… preserving the Commandments, which you’d think I’d be in favor of, but being POLITICALLY CORRECT is so bad that I’m not, in this case.”
I believe the moral is, “If the PC people have their way, all evidence of God’s existence will be erased from this world.” Simply using the BC/AD notation shows the “lie” of atheism, according to the siege mentality common to christian fundamentalism.
Concerns about the Third Commandment (or Second, depending on denomination) would likely be brushed aside; note that Willis seemed OK writing this strip in the first place. The Third-ish Commandment is one of the more tricky Commandments to interpret, and most fundamentalists would reject the idea that there are atheists who understand it better than themselves.
Heh. I’m reading this as a fairly non-religious person, and I don’t see this strip as “the fundies feel threatened by secular society!”, I see it as “political correctness gone mad”.
I actually had a sort of opposite experience.
Being Jewish, I was told by my dad that we used BCE instead of BC… so. In history class, I started proudly – sort of defiantly – using BCE whenever I read from the text books (even though the text always said BC.) I always expected someone to call me on it, and then I’d tell them “I’m Jewish, so I’m doing this.”
…No one ever did. Now I look back at it with. Not quite shame? Because Jews being persecuted isn’t actually an imagined thing, and former generations sadly have ingrained in us the idea that we could be turned on and persecuted at a moment’s notice.
But as I personally have largely been spared that, so part of me also wants to giggle at my old self for being ridiculous.
Originally posted:
October 7, 1997
Originally posted:
October 8, 1997
As I understand it, they’ve discovered that the calendar was off by several years. (I want to say three) which meant that, by the old standard, Jesus would have been born in the year 3 “Before Christ!” 3 “Before Common Era” works much better.