Common Misconception

I, and many other people, have been trying to erase the historical basis for the calendar of much of the western world. From Conservapedia:

The term "Common Era" (CE) is an attempt to erase the historical basis for the primary calendar dating system in the Western world. "Common Era" has no real meaning, and even the origin of this term is unclear. The 1972 Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary has no entry for "Common Era."

Before going further I should point out that Conservapedia is basically full of shit on every article it contains. The talk page of this particular article contained many statements of people pointing out that this article is basically BS, and gets facts wrong to try to create a conspiracy which isn't there. Conservapedia appears to many conservatives a bad name.

According to Wikipedia (if you think it has a liberal bias, just check the references), C.E. has been used sporadically since 1615, first use by Kepler, although he used a latin phrase "anno aerae nostrae vulgaris", which roughly means "year of our common era" (I could be wrong with the translation).

My main problem, though, is with the idea that people who use the abbreviation C.E. are trying to destroy Christian culture in some way. The alternative to C.E. is A.D., which stands for "Anno Domini", or "the year of our lord". By using this abbreviation, you are implying that your lord is Jesus Christ. For any person not Christian, this would be blasphemous.

Yet there are many non-christians in the western world, who use the Gregorian calendar because it is the cultural norm. Any if C.E. stands for "Christian Era", you are rightly attributing the source of the calendar to the Christian religion. Everybody's happy. No need to start a crazy website, promoting this crazy conspiracy theory as well as Barack Obama being the first Affirmative Action President. So really, C.E. is perfectly fine.

Error Rating: 8. Would've only been a 6 for crazy conspiracy inventing, but they didn't even get basic facts right.

-Enginerd