What year are we in according to Non-Christians?

Just wondering if everyone on earth believes this is the year 2011 AD, considering BC/AD stands for "Before Christ" and "Anno Domini" (Latin for 'The Year Of Our Lord). Does it bother most Non-Christians or Atheists that the way we keep time revolves around the birth of Jesus?

Doesn't bother me. Atheist hold no common belief about Jesus. It's just an arbitrary date anyway. As long as we're using the same point in time as our starting point, it doesn't matter what it's called. A rose is still a rose, you know?

Maybe B.D. and A.D. are in order, before and after Darwin? Meh...

Religion is a huge part of human history, we had to start at zero somewhere...

And it's not just Christianity, the atheists can also be angry at Paganism, if they like Our days of the week stem from their many and varied gods:

Tuesday -- the day of Tir, the wargod of the ancient Skandinavians

Wednesday -- named after Woden, the king of the gods in the same pagan pantheon, who was worshipped by torture!

Thursday -- the day of Thor, the god of technology in the same pagan religion

Friday -- named for Frey or Freya, another Skandinavian cross-dressing god-goddess.

Saturday -- after Saturn, the wisdom-God of the Christian-murdering Romans.

Sunday and Monday -- named for Sol Invictus and Luna, the personifications of the celestrial bodies in the Roman pantheon

reply to post by Under Water


It's not the whole world, just on a side note. Jews still keep their own calendar, I believe starts from their date for creation (could be wrong). We're currently in the year 5771 according to the hebrew calendar.

Would assume some other cultures/faiths probably also have their own calendars.

I asked myself the same question before. I don't really know but I know we go back to the first human civilizations. My guess is we are at least 6,000 years old.

In my art history class it was referred to the dates as BCE and CE which we were told could stand for:
before current era, before christian era and before common era
and
current era, common era.

Nah, I got over it pretty quick. What I wonder is how Jesus' friends kept time after he died. Like did they say, "Happy new year everyone! It's going to be a great year 3!" I don't know...

Well some people use the terms BCE and CE, before common era and common era. But I don't really care about the religious connotation of it. It certainly beats writing out 4.54 billion and something years out

In Thailand, its the year 2554. Pretty sure this correlates with Buddhist teachings... but not %100 sure. It is pretty interesting when you go there and certain places where you get receipts, the year is 2554 (or 2553 when i was there last year). Also, some monuments have been erected and the dates when they were opened are like 2522, 2344, etc...

Not sure if thats the kinda info you were after, but interesting nonetheless

Originally posted by Nspekta
In Thailand, its the year 2554. Pretty sure this correlates with Buddhist teachings... but not %100 sure. It is pretty interesting when you go there and certain places where you get receipts, the year is 2554 (or 2553 when i was there last year). Also, some monuments have been erected and the dates when they were opened are like 2522, 2344, etc...

Not sure if thats the kinda info you were after, but interesting nonetheless

Yes, that is exactly what I was looking for. If other places actually record a different date on their newspapers and such. What date is written on their checks, etc. That's pretty interesting, thanks!

Originally posted by Griffo
Well some people use the terms BCE and CE, before common era and common era. But I don't really care about the religious connotation of it. It certainly beats writing out 4.54 billion and something years out

I would have to agree with you. Further than that it would be something like the year 13-14 Billion years after the "singularity" that is believed to be the compaction and density of a large amount of energy that suddenly expanded and could possibly be further back than that if time did in fact exist before the "singularity" or outside of the known universe.

We really have no accurate way to precisely date the age of the universe PE (Post Expansion) as of yet so we just go with the 2000 year I reckon. We progress, baby steps though, maybe less than that more like ant steps.

reply to post by Under Water


[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/033cbf141390.jpg[/atsimg]
Just for an extra... Here is a photo i took of a monument in a town called Chumphon, in Thailand. If you zoom in on the image (sorry, not sure how to make it bigger) you can see the date they erected the monument... shows the year as 2535!
Pretty Cool!

Notice, on the English section, they say the date is 1992 ( thats for the tourists! haha)

reply to post by idonotcollectstamps


Yeah I was thinking about which number I should put down for the calendar 13.7 billion or 4.54 billion whilst I was writing the post, went with the age of the earth