I was taking a shower and started wondering about atheists and how thier time works. Since the year of the date is based off of the birth of christ, do atheist use it?

I cant think of any other system to keep time and date.

quote:Originally posted by Lundmark:

I was taking a shower and started wondering about atheists and how thier time works. Since the year of the date is based off of the birth of christ, do atheist use it?

I cant think of any other system to keep time and date.



i think we Christians, kinda "got then drop on 'em, Tex".. thanks in part to Emperor Constantine "forcing" the (Roman) world to convert. But now it is politically correct to use B.C.E and C.E....if that was what you meant

Their time is also based on the birth of christ because some of them dont think Christ was God's son but that he was only a great leader.

What possible reason could an atheist,agnostic,christian ,or whatever, have need of a different system to keep track of time? Year One could be based on anyevent in history, either real or imagined. The established system is universally accepted. Why try to change it?

Convenience. It would confuse people if we had all these differant dates, wouldn't it? (For example, for me, it's the year 19 AM (After Me, haha). The entire world uses it, if not for only for economic trade. I believe Muslims use a different date, I think it's currently 1600-something in their timeline.

in biology b.p. is used. 'before present'. it obviously does not work for short time spans, but for millions and billions of years it works fine. i think there is another one... but i can't think of it at this time.

it would simply be too hard to redifine the date system just to prove a point. it works well, it is accepted and known, and is an easy system. there is no point in kicking up a fuss for an athiest calender when the thiest one works fine.

Are you talking about a reference point in time like year zero, or the Start of AD? Usually time is based off the mainstream religion of the country. It doesn't really matter if you believe in the mainstream religion or not and since we don't actually know when time itself began, we base it on the most significant thing we can remember. The birth of christ in the Case of those who descended from romans. Really what year it is doesn't matter since all time is just relative to revolutions of the the earth around the sun and a day is just one revolution on the earths axis. It's really just a way to figure out when to plant crops and to have a reference for appointments.

Atheist have come up with a simple way of rectifying this problem. Instead of using AD or Ado Domino ie. Year of the Lord, They use CE or Common Era. The Commen Era by pure coincidence happens to begin when Jesus was born.

What bothers me is if the Common Era started with the birth of Jesus how come we celibrate New Years and Christmas on diferent days?

[This message has been edited by MasterPython (edited 07-30-2004).]

Because it didn't actually start when Jesus was born. It started several years after his death. And Christmas has nothing to do with Christ at all; it's stolen from the festival of Yule (something common in many of the European pagan faiths) and then modified to be both heathen and Christian friendly, as to gather more converts without pissing off the already Christian members of the faith.

According to my Calender its 13th Av 5764... new years coming up soon too.

quote:Originally posted by Optimus Prime:

Because it didn't actually start when Jesus was born. It started several years after his death.



Actually, I believe the common believed date of Jesus' birth is 6 B.C. The AD system was created by a medievel monk who "calculated" using some system, so naturally, he was off. But this only works if he was born at all, but I believe there is light evidence that a Jesus was born around 6 B.C.

My apologies then, I should have double checked, I guess it was a few years after his birth.

quote:Originally posted by Fascistsmasher:

According to my Calender its 13th Av 5764... new years coming up soon too.

Happy Rosh Hashanah

I doubt an Atheist would go through the trouble of trying to have his own time system. The current one works fine, and regardless of the religious factor, Jesus did exist and has influenced the world powerfully 2000 years post-mortem. That's impressive in it's own right.