Read / Write Comments | By Vexen Crabtree 2000 Jan 19
Some other equally boring pages from Vexen:
I want to pick words that are insulting to the fewest people. I want to pick words that do not reflect unnecessarily on the sex, race or religion of the person I am talking with/about.
Contents:
"Atheism is not a religion or a philosophy. Atheism simply means "without belief in god(s)". There are two types of atheist:"
- Implicit atheist (lower case atheism) means an atheist who has not yet learned of theism, or gods, or religion. All people are implicit atheists until one point, some are forever (such as most of Japan and Russia through history)
- Explicit Atheist (upper case Atheism) means an atheist who understands what a god is, and concludes that none exist
Text quoted from "Atheism" by Vexen 2003 Oct 26
CE means Common Era and is the name of the most popular dating system. The current year is 2000ce.
BCE means Before Current Era and it counts the time before CE, counting backwards. 1bce is the year before 1ce.
BC means Before Christ and is a reference to a prediction of the Christian messiah's birth date made in the second millennium. The date of Jesus Christ's birth is known to be about 4 bce, so the reference is poor. It is also being replaced for the same reason that AD is being replaced.
AD means Anno domini which means "in the year of our lord". Less than a third of the world is Christian, and expecting someone to conform to a religious convention that is not their own is immoral.
CE has the same value as AD, and BCE has the same value as BC, so there are no problems with the change unless you are an intolerant Christian.
I believe that when a person uses the term "BCE" or "CE" they are showing that they do not care which religion people are - they are showing themselves to be considerate and moral. Using the term "BC" and "AD" shows inconsideracy for others feelings and beliefs (unless of course they do not know the difference (like most people), which is why this page exists).
"We have received many Emails about the use of CE and BCE:"
- Some Christians are distressed at the new terms. Some feel that AD and BC have been in use for centuries and that this tradition should be respected. Others see the switch to CE and BCE as just one more example of non-Christian religions being given precedence over Christianity.
- Some Emailers, Christians and others, support the new terms. They feel bound by the Golden Rule -- to do onto others what they would wish be done to themselves. If AD and BC cause distress to others, then the Ethic of Reciprocity (of which the Golden Rule is one of many examples) would suggest that the terms be scrapped in favor of more neutral terms.
Personally, I feel that anything that makes Christians face the fact that they are not the only legitimate religious group around, the better.
"The YYYY MMM DD date format is the internationally agreed concise format for unambiguous dates and is to be adopted by everyone. It is logical, with the biggest denominators being listed first (same as numbers, times, weights, etc), making it easily sortable and utterly clear. The International Organization for Standardization specification for the International Date Format is the ISO-8601 format, adopted so far by the United Nations, commerce groups, scientific communities and most Western governments. "2005 Feb 29" is an example of an ISO-8601 compliant date print.""International Date Format ISO-8601" by Vexen Crabtree, 2005 Aug
Hir is a short word for "His/Her" or "Him/Her". Instead of writing the awkward sentence "Where is his/her details?" we write "Where is hir details?". Many other languages (such as Cantonese, Chinese and French) have a word that means "him/her" or "she/he". There is no easy way to write (s)he, possibly because the construct (s)he is a good enough method.
When I say I "study theology" some people assume I mean Christianity, because this is what it most frequently means however the term doesn't only mean the study of Christian theology.
"I am using the plural ['theologies'] here deliberately. A polytheistic religion gives many different accounts of the divine beings, and these accounts, or theologies, reflect the divine patronage of their inventors. People sometimes raise their eyebrows when they hear of Pagan theology, but in fact the word 'theology' dates from Pagan times and was first used concerning Pagan deities."
"Pagan Pathways" essay on "Pagan Theologies" by Prudence Jones
Page 32. More quotes from this book
Read / Write Comments | By Vexen Crabtree 2000 Jan 19
