Redate the Calendar!

[Pangloss]

Over in another thread it was suggested that "the year of our lord" (AD) is no longer really appropriate to the kind of age that we live in today.

 

If you were given the privilege of restarting the calendar beginning from a key date in history, what AD year would you begin it with, and why?

 

Just by way of example, I'll say that I might begin renumbering from 1546, the year of Tycho Brahe's birth, because of his contributions to astronomy and promoting accuracy in the scientific process of visual observation and data recording. What date might you choose?

[Radical Edward]

I'd start everything in 1859, the year we truly began to understand our place as humans in the world.

[jackson33]

Muslims, Jewish, Chinese and many places already have different calendars according to their heritage, as did other societies (Mayans) but the Gregorian Calendar is internationally recognized...

 

The legal code of the United States does not specify an official national calendar. Use of the Gregorian calendar in the United States stems from an Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom in 1751, which specified use of the Gregorian calendar in England and its colonies. However, its adoption in the United Kingdom and other countries was fraught with confusion, controversy, and even violence (Bates, 1952; Gingerich, 1983; Hoskin, 1983). It also had a deeper cultural impact through the disruption of traditional festivals and calendrical practices (MacNeill, 1982). [/Quote]

 

The Gregorian Calendar

The Gregorian calendar today serves as an international standard for civil use. In addition, it regulates the ceremonial cycle of the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches. In fact, its original purpose was ecclesiastical. Although a variety of other calendars are in use today, they are restricted to particular religions or cultures. [/Quote]

 

http://astro.nmsu.edu/~lhuber/leaphist.html

 

Seems to me, changing the BC or AD, for the sake of an American minority, when billions of people not Christian elsewhere have no problem in acceptance and the fact it's nothing that formed in America, would be foolish. Catholics, themselves had a hard time being accepted in Colonial days...

 

At the time the United States was founded in 1776 on the English-speaking colonies of the eastern seaboard, only a small fraction of the population was Catholic.[/Quote]

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_in_the_United_States

[Sisyphus]

It's hard to come up with a day that feels momentous enough. Maybe the Apollo 11 landing (the day we became no longer a single planet species), but that's recent enough that I don't feel like I have the historical perspective to really judge it.

 

AD and BC are already replaced with CE and BCE ("common era" and "before common era") in many contexts, which everyone can agree is at least accurate (while only Christians would say AD and BC are accurate), since, well, it is the common calendar. This seems sensible enough, but a lot of Christians are deeply and inexplicably offended by it. (That Wikipedia allows CE and BCE is one of Conservapedia's main pieces of evidence that it's a big anti-Christian conspiracy.) Though I guess if they're offended by that, they'd be offended by any change.

 

Alternately, we could institute a calendar that counts down to some arbitrary point in the future. Make it distant enough, and when that time comes around gullible people will think it's the end of the world.

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Merged post follows:

Consecutive posts merged

I'd start everything in 1859, the year we truly began to understand our place as humans in the world.

 

That's not a bad choice, but it sure wouldn't help with the "Darwinism is a religion" claims.

Edited March 15, 2010 by Sisyphus
Consecutive posts merged.

[bascule]

If you were given the privilege of restarting the calendar beginning from a key date in history, what AD year would you begin it with, and why?

 

I'd choose January 1st, 1970, the date of the Unix Epoch. Why? I don't really have a good reason but I can't think of a better arbitrary date.

[insane_alien]

why change? its been working well so far and the cost of a retool is going to be massive(in terms of people being confused organics like usual alone)

 

switch AD/BC to CE/BCE (although AC/DC would be my choice but thats not going to cut it with non-metalheads.)

[john5746]

I would restart our calender in 2012, call everything prior to be Pre Mayan Prophecy and everything after to be..... we'll think about that if we get there.

[tomgwyther]

I'd start the calendar on February 3rd 1979. Technically, I only have peoples word for it that anything existed prior to that date.

Plus it probably the most momentous day in all human history when two asteroids collided over Portsmouth some 31 years ago and I was created.

 

Failing that idea - which may not be too popular - we could adopt the calendar's start, to be the day this thread was created. Maybe with a "BT" and "AT" system (Before thread, after thread.)

[npts2020]

I don't think we should change the calendar until we make contact with an alien sentient species. Until then we are living BC (before contact).

[swansont]

March 10, 1982, when we were destroyed by the Jupiter effect. It is now Jan 8, in the year 18, PWD (post-world-destruction)

[Dak]

29th of February, 2023.

 

that'd make us in 13BC, and we can have fun remembering that 12 comes next, arguing about whether there's a year 0, trying to figure out what happens on non-leap years, and have a big party in 13 years time to celebrate the first millennium.

[Sayonara]

I would restart our calender in 2012, call everything prior to be Pre Mayan Prophecy and everything after to be..... we'll think about that if we get there.

That would kinda make it all true though. The Pre-Mayan-Prophecy world dies in 2012... because they said it would so we decided it did so they said it would so we decided it did.

 

While we are changing the calendar system we might as well all switch to decimal time too

[Mr Skeptic]

I'd choose January 1st, 1970, the date of the Unix Epoch. Why? I don't really have a good reason but I can't think of a better arbitrary date.

 

That's quite reasonable. The computer age is a fairly momentous event, and though it didn't start at any specific point in time, this the date they decided to start counting from.

 

Although I'd hate to have to rewrite all the history books and relearn my history.