What year should it be?

[Bilbo]

Today is 2008. Why? Because our current dating system was determined by the church. So if we decided to give the church the middle finger and not base our year on the mythical figure of Jesus what should it be?


What do you think we should pick as year one and what year would that make today?

[TithonusSyndrome]

The expense and inconvenience of overhauling global dating systems isn't worth snubbing the Church over. I keep the year at 2008.

[Modax]

Well, there's the tranquility calendar, which counts the day of the first moon landing as time zero. So we're currently living in 39 A.T (after tranquility) The Apollo astronauts landed in the sea of tranquility.

The tranquility calendar has 13 months of 28 days, divided into four weeks. Because 28 is a multiple of 7, each month begins of a monday and ends on a friday. So you can predict the day of the week for any given calendar date. the 365th day of the year isn't part of any month, and has no day of the week. It is called Armstrong day. Every leapyear, there is an extra day called Aldrin Day.

link

The tranquility calendar is also used in the Orions Arm SF universe.

[Vyraeth]

I agree with TithonusSyndrome in that there's no sense in trying to change the dating system simply to screw the Church over, but if we were to do it, and could hand wave away all the complications, why not use earliest record of civilization as our starting point? If we know that civilization started 4,000 B.C. for instance, why not call this the year 6008, etc.?

I would keep the same calendar. In fact, this kind of transition would be easy for most people to adjust to but there really isn't much point in doing it, except to erase the Church conceived focal point.

[Junghalli]

The expense and inconvenience of overhauling global dating systems isn't worth snubbing the Church over. I keep the year at 2008.

^ What he said. Our present dating system works well enough, IMO it's too much of a pain in the arse to overhaul it just because we'd prefer a less arbitrary date.

If I had to come up with an alternate system after a little thought I'm sort of partial to dating from the end of the ice age, because it marks the beginning of what we might classify as "historical" time vs "prehistoric" time (IIRC, it is the threshold for something being considered a fossil). Which would make the present year around 10,000 HI (Holocene Interglacial).

[Bilbo]

This questions isnt about cost, convenience, or any of that.

It is about what you think the date should be if we ignored the Christian biased calendar and just hand-waved it out of existance.

[Rye]

Today is 2008. Why? Because our current dating system was determined by the church. So if we decided to give the church the middle finger and not base our year on the mythical figure of Jesus what should it be?


What do you think we should pick as year one and what year would that make today?

Change the letters from AD to CE and there you go. Any date you're going to use is just going to be arbitrary and limited by the sorts of numbers people can understand. The question's pretty fatuous and reeks of ingratiation.

[Samuel]

What year would it be if we didn't have the numerical errors in the origional calander? I'm pretty sure the lack of a year zero screws it up, but there are some other factors that mess it up.

[Captain Seafort]

The biggest one is that it's about six years slow, going by the Bible - Herod died in 4 "BC" which, IIRC, was two years after the birth of Christ.

Per the OP, I'd go for 1,071, based on the date of the Battle of Brunanbugh, as it effectively defines the formation of England. The Anglosphere is the dominant political force in the world, and has been for the past few centuries.

[Bilbo]

Today is 2008. Why? Because our current dating system was determined by the church. So if we decided to give the church the middle finger and not base our year on the mythical figure of Jesus what should it be?


What do you think we should pick as year one and what year would that make today?

Change the letters from AD to CE and there you go. Any date you're going to use is just going to be arbitrary and limited by the sorts of numbers people can understand. The question's pretty fatuous and reeks of ingratiation.

Going from AD to CE is nothing more than a pathetic copout unless it can be proven that something other than the religious events make the date important.

[Rye]

Why? It's consistent and requires next to zero effort. That's all you need for a useful dating system. But hey, if you want to say this year is 15,531,455,987 or however old the universe is, go for it. I'm sure it would accomplish a lot.

[Bilbo]

Why? It's consistent and requires next to zero effort. That's all you need for a useful dating system. But hey, if you want to say this year is 15,531,455,987 or however old the universe is, go for it. I'm sure it would accomplish a lot.

I am sure there were dating systems in use when this one was forced upon anyone under Catholic rule. You got a bug up your ass about this then find another thread to play in.

[Starglider]

POSIX already defined the One True Epoch Date as midnight, January 1st, 1970. Further debate is irrelevant.

[Executor32]

There's always the Human Era calendar, if you're that offended by the religious origins of the Gregorian calendar. It starts at 10,000 BCE, the beginning of the Holocene Epoch and where we see the first developments of civilization, agriculture and domestication of animals. Gregorian years are easily converted to it, simply adding a 1 before it. For example, this year is 12008 HE.

That said, I don't get why people get up in arms over this kind of shit. Oh noes, the current calendar has its origins in religion! Quick, let's change it and have to deal with the problem of getting billions of people used to the new calendar and overhauling our computer systems, just so you aren't offended by it.

[Rye]

Why? It's consistent and requires next to zero effort. That's all you need for a useful dating system. But hey, if you want to say this year is 15,531,455,987 or however old the universe is, go for it. I'm sure it would accomplish a lot.

I am sure there were dating systems in use when this one was forced upon anyone under Catholic rule. You got a bug up your ass about this then find another thread to play in.

Uh-huh, you asked a question and it got answered. A dating system's purpose is to tell the time. An "origin" on that line does make things more practical when you realise how old the planet and the universe are (especially when they're indefinitely old, unlike the origin point). Even if you handwave away the problems with your desires for top-down redating, it has no real benefit. Let's rename Thursday because it is based on Thor! Pfft. Immature asinine crap.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Given time is essentially infinite, and the arbitrary nature of dating anyway along with the costs and cultural issues in changing what is a globally recognised system, it's pretty self-evident we need do nothing to the status quo.

As for "what year should it be?", well, what point do you want to start at? I think 8/12/83 is a good point for Year Zero.

[Bilbo]

Why? It's consistent and requires next to zero effort. That's all you need for a useful dating system. But hey, if you want to say this year is 15,531,455,987 or however old the universe is, go for it. I'm sure it would accomplish a lot.

I am sure there were dating systems in use when this one was forced upon anyone under Catholic rule. You got a bug up your ass about this then find another thread to play in.

Uh-huh, you asked a question and it got answered. A dating system's purpose is to tell the time. An "origin" on that line does make things more practical when you realise how old the planet and the universe are (especially when they're indefinitely old, unlike the origin point). Even if you handwave away the problems with your desires for top-down redating, it has no real benefit. Let's rename Thursday because it is based on Thor! Pfft. Immature asinine crap.

Nope more along the lines of what truly world relevant dates should be used as a starting point. The mythological birth of someone who if he existed was probably nothing like be is described in the Bible doesnt make much sense to use.

[Bilbo]

There's always the Human Era calendar, if you're that offended by the religious origins of the Gregorian calendar. It starts at 10,000 BCE, the beginning of the Holocene Epoch and where we see the first developments of civilization, agriculture and domestication of animals. Gregorian years are easily converted to it, simply adding a 1 before it. For example, this year is 12008 HE.

That said, I don't get why people get up in arms over this kind of shit. Oh noes, the current calendar has its origins in religion! Quick, let's change it and have to deal with the problem of getting billions of people used to the new calendar and overhauling our computer systems, just so you aren't offended by it.

Not up in arms at all. In fact if someone did want to change it I would laugh at them for wasting time and money not worth the effort. Just exploring more logical starting points for recording time for humanity.

[Junghalli]

I am sure there were dating systems in use when this one was forced upon anyone under Catholic rule.

The Romans used the date Rome was supposedly founded in (though it's rooted in mythology as well). By their dating system I think the present date would be 3000-something AFC (After the Founding of the City).

The Islamic world used the dating system based on the Hijra, and according to their calender it's the year 1429 AH (After Hijra).

Of course, I suspect you won't like the second one since it's based on religion, and I don't really see how having a calender based on old Roman mythology is better than having one based on Christian mythology.

[Formless]

The basic issue is that the only dates you could assign that are NOT completely arbitrary are all so far back in the past (the last extinction event, the advent of life, the creation of the Earth, the creation of the UNIVERSE) that any number system you use would seem just as arbitrary and impractical to use, or are based on human achievements of dubious importance. Even the Tranquility calendar assumes that the Moon landings were really the most important human achievement EVER rather then simply the US waving its most expensive penis compensator ever at the Soviets.

[Bilbo]

Not that I suggest it would make sense to use it but what if we followed the typical fantasy world setting and went with groups of years as part of eras? Yeah I know it would make recordkeeping a real bitch and dating things would be a pain in the ass. But just out of curiosity.

What would it be? Would we be in the Space Era? The Information Era?

[Junghalli]

Well the Human Era calender seems fairly practical at least; 12,000 seems a manageable year number. And it does have the advantage of marking a transition that pretty much all of humanity can agree was fairly important (end of the last ice age and beginning of agriculture).

[Rye]

Nope more along the lines of what truly world relevant dates should be used as a starting point. The mythological birth of someone who if he existed was probably nothing like be is described in the Bible doesnt make much sense to use.

The problem is that there is no such thing as a "truly relevant date" and that is an absurd thing to look for. Whether something was based on a mythological birth or not is irrelevant. So long as everyone can triangulate their position in time relative to other dates recently and in history, that's mission accomplished as far as dating is concerned.

[Dooey Jo]

I am sure there were dating systems in use when this one was forced upon anyone under Catholic rule.

Indeed. They used the Julian calendar. The Gregorian calendar being "forced upon" anyone is an interesting description of the process. Everyone (eventually) changed because the old calendar sucked and had become widely misaligned with the tropical year, and later because it's more practical to use the same time as everyone else.

I suppose we can set the year 570 as year 0. Nothing religious there, just history. Or is it?

Well the Human Era calender seems fairly practical at least; 12,000 seems a manageable year number. And it does have the advantage of marking a transition that pretty much all of humanity can agree was fairly important (end of the last ice age and beginning of agriculture).

It's just as arbitrary as anything. Those events supposedly marking year zero took several hundred years (at the very least). In fact, it can be argued that it's still based on the year Jesus was born (or wasn't, since it's actually wrong, making the debate even sillier), since all dates will actually still be relative to this date, not the made up 10000 BC. You just call it "10,000" instead of one/zero, which really is just complicating things.

[Sea Skimmer]

All our days of the week are named after Norse gods, so we’d better overhaul that religiously based system at the same time we pointlessly reject a Christian calendar. This opens up the possibility that we change the number of days in the week, and the months too.

And if you want a new 0 date, I say 1945… the year of the vengeful atomic fire, becomes year 0. Our whole modern world and the way nation states interact changed after all; it’s a good a place as any.