Its the year 3002006

lostexpectation

Here's another farout thread for you, I don't buy into this whole atheism=darwism thing but I was just thinking about 2006 and then there is this impression they give that we're only became a society at year 0. and history only goes back 2000 years.

It just feeds into the fundamentalist theory that the world and people ain't that old, but it is grating that everytime is dictated from the 'year of our lord'

maybe we should recognise humans have been going for hell of long time, I not sure where you put the starting date from the supposed time we came out of the trees perhaps was that 3million years ago, or perhaps when we becmae the only homos at around 50,000 years ago

Others ways of marking years were based on the reign of emporors or the founding of indiviual cities. hebrew puts the creation of the world at 3761 BC and counts from there.

The helenic say 10,000bc as the start of civilisation

and the missing link lucy is supposed to come from around 3.5million years ago, so it we could start counting our dates from 3002006 just to transistion ourselves and gives a much broader idea of what it is to be human.



wikipedia describes it quite well http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Before_Christ#Earlier_calendar_epochs

MrJoeSoap

lostexpectation wrote:

Here's another farout thread for you, I don't buy into this whole atheism=darwism thing but I was just thinking about 2006 and the act the there is this impression the given that we're only became a society at year 0. and history only goes back 2000 years.

Really difficult to understand that sentence, but...

What I think you mean from this is that someone, most likely Christians, use the current calender to somehow try to convince people that society only began at the year 0. I disagree, though I can see where you are coming from to an extent.

It just feed into the fundamentalist theory that the world and people ain't that old, but it is grating that everytime is dictated from the 'year of our lord'

I don't really think there is a conspiracy to make people believe that the world isn't older than 2006 years, at least not any more than Christianity itself is such a 'conspiracy'.

maybe we should recognise humans have been going for hell of long time, I not sure where you put the starting date from the supposed time we came out of the trees perhaps was that 3million years ago, or perhaps when we becmae the only homos at aroudn 50,000 years ago

We (well some of us...) do recognise that humans have been around a long time. Estimating how long is a painful subject, and one that will give you so many varying answers that you'll probably wish you never bothered enquiring.

and the missing link lucy is supposed to come from around 3.5million years ago, so it we could start counting our dates from 3002006 just to transistion ourselves and gives a much broader idea of what it is to be human.

But you clearly already have a broader sense of what it is to be human, the fact that we call this current "year" 2006 is completely irrelevant and is nothing more than a token to keep some sort of an order on life.

Zillah

I don't understand what we're supposed to do.

Dades

Zillah wrote:

I don't understand what we're supposed to do.

Me neither. I think it was suggested we came from monkeys.

Zombrex

I think the point Lost is making is that using a Christian dating system makes it appear like the important bits of humanity have only been going on for that last 2000 years, when in fact they have actually been going on for longer.

The issue though is what point to pick. Civilisation in the modern sense appeared about 6,000-5,000 year ago, so I suppose we could say this is 6006 instead of 2006.

Personally, as part of my atheists anti-religion rebellion, I just use C.E (comman era) and B.C.E (before common era) with dates, instead of AD and BC. Like it our not this was the dating system used for the last 1800 years, and the C.E B.C.E dates regonise that, while still being secular in nature.

Was soon as we all move over to star dates the better

Asiaprod

The Atheist wrote:

Me neither. I think it was suggested we came from monkeys.

Ah, that reminds me of those Yellow fruit that are such a perfect fit for the human hand and mouth that they could not have evolved naturally.
Its all clear to me now:), its also Friday night, I'll have one for ye all.

Zillah

Asiaprod wrote:

Ah, that reminds me of those Yellow fruit that are such a perfect fit for the human hand and mouth that they could not have evolved naturally.

Clearly evidence that they were designed.

Dades

Asiaprod wrote:

Its all clear to me now:), its also Friday night, I'll have one for ye all.

Stay out of those Karaoke bars!

Scofflaw

Wicknight wrote:

I think the point Lost is making is that using a Christian dating system makes it appear like the important bits of humanity have only been going on for that last 2000 years, when in fact they have actually been going on for longer.

The issue though is what point to pick. Civilisation in the modern sense appeared about 6,000-5,000 year ago, so I suppose we could say this is 6006 instead of 2006.

Now that really does chime in with Creationism....

Wicknight wrote:

Personally, as part of my atheists anti-religion rebellion, I just use C.E (comman era) and B.C.E (before common era) with dates, instead of AD and BC. Like it our not this was the dating system used for the last 1800 years, and the C.E B.C.E dates regonise that, while still being secular in nature.

I just don't like 'Common Era', because it essentially makes the Christian dates universal, suggesting that all other dating systems are irrelevant & parochial. I actually prefer AD/BC, because at least it keeps the 'local' element.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Asiaprod

The Atheist wrote:

Stay out of those Karaoke bars!

*From a horizontal position on the floor* Buy bottle, head home. That way, I always know where I am when I wake up in the morning.
Karaoke Bars, now that's my vision of Hell.

Zombrex

Scofflaw wrote:

I just don't like 'Common Era', because it essentially makes the Christian dates universal, suggesting that all other dating systems are irrelevant & parochial. I actually prefer AD/BC, because at least it keeps the 'local' element.

Had not thought about it like that. I'm aware that other cultures use a different calendar, I guess I just always inferred the "local" bit in the "common" bit. The "common" Chinese calander will obviously be different.

I'm telling ya, Stardates!

Zillah

Oh yes, very practical:

On Stardates wrote:

Stardates generally increase with time, although locally they have been observed to increase with time at different rates, both within particular episodes as well as between. There are several cases where future stardates have a lower number than past stardates even when lower stardates are clearly in the future, not just in an episode aired later.

bonkey

Wicknight wrote:

I think the point Lost is making is that using a Christian dating system makes it appear like the important bits of humanity have only been going on for that last 2000 years, when in fact they have actually been going on for longer.

To a mathematician, it looks like a dating system centred on an arbitrary point.

Translating / Mappiong the same dating system to be centred on a different arbitrary point would have no effect.

For me, I see "BC" as negative numbers, and "AD" as positives. My number line stretches in both directions, so I don't have a problem

humanji

In fairness it's a moot point because it's far too late to change the 2007 calenders!

lostexpectation

bonkey wrote:

To a mathematician, it looks like a dating system centred on an arbitrary point.

Translating / Mappiong the same dating system to be centred on a different arbitrary point would have no effect.

For me, I see "BC" as negative numbers, and "AD" as positives. My number line stretches in both directions, so I don't have a problem

exactly if you put it as 3002006, its its compromise between keeping a recognisable date and showing our truer age

thanks for translating me wicknight

minus from what though.

bonkey

lostexpectation wrote:

exactly if you put it as 3002006, its its compromise between keeping a recognisable date and showing our truer age

Our truer age? According to whom?

My age is 34. No calendar is going to more "truly" reflect that than any other.

if you mean the age of our species, then I would argue that you're still picking an arbitrary point. Its not like you can point to a specific moment in time and say "this was the birth of the first member of the modern human species". You're just picking a nice rounded approximation of when we currently think it happened, more or less. And why that particular branching? We branched from apes about 6 million years ago, and Homo Sapiens only appeared approximately 500,000 years ago. Homo Erectus was 1.7 million years back.Homo Habilis somewhere around the 2 million years mark. Sure, by the same timescales A. Africanus and A. Robustus seperated 3 million years ago, but why is that so significant?

What is less arbitrary than an approximation of one of several evolutionary events? How is this a better choice for a calendar?

The objection to 2006 in the original post is that it falsely suggests civilisation / society only arose 2000 years ago. While I think thats an entirely misplaced argument in the first place, surely going back 3,000,000 years should be worse by the same standard, as it falsely suggests civilisation / society began 3 million years ago. Of the two, the latter is even further from the mark than the former, timewise.

Of course, if we accept - or can even suggest - that the proposed "Lucy-centric" clock doesn't suggest that civilisation began 3 million years ago, then we have to readdress the original complaint about the current system . To be honest, I don't know of a single person who thinks that Christ was born into a wilderness and that only with his birth did civilisation begin. In fact, every single Christian I know who has any historical background knows he was born into a land already under control of the Roman Empire, so civilisation has to date back more than 2,000 years.

minus from what though.

When we move to large timescales, we can effectively consider our current date to be 0.

1 million years ago is 1 million BC.
1,75 million years ago is 1.75 million BC.
6 million years ago is 6 million BC
10 million years ago is 10 million BC.

Nice and simple, right?

1 million years ago is 2 million After Lucy (AL)
1,75 million years ago is 1.25m AL.
6 million years ago is 3m Before Lucy (BL)
10 million years ago is 7m BL

And what's 3 million years ago? During Lucy?

So for prehistoric dating, it adds complexity. Not much, I grant, but I'm not the one suggesting that people can't understand that the Birth of Christ isn't the Birth of Civilisation because of the calendar. From such a perspective, I'd do anything to remove complexity.

For modern dating, its either irrelevant (it will get dropped to 2 digits, just like we do with our 4-digit years) or increased overhead. Indeed, given that the last 3 digits are effectively static, I would predict they'd be dropped immediately from pretty-much everywhere, thus removing any potential benefit.

In short, I see this as adding nothing. Well...nothing except giving religious fundamentalists of one flavour or another something to complain about, given that we're basing the calendar system on a direct refutation of their beliefs.

However, given that the objection to the existant system is - for me - more likely to be rooted in its religious ties than in any commentary its making about when civilisation started, I would be loathe to suggest that a preferable system is one which simply shifts who's p1ssed off by it.