Things that have Changed Since You were in School

Yeah, whether or not the historical Jesus was the true "Messiah" is irrelevant. It doesn't suddenly stop him from being a super important religious figure.

 

Damn that King George III -- he lost the bloody American colonies!

 

I graduated high school in 1980. LOTS has changed since then.

Reports were handwritten, and turning in typed reports was nearly unheard of as many people didn't own typewriters. I remember typing class was on manuals. My fingers were too short to keep them on the home keys AND use my little fingers. So I dropped the class because the teacher said that if I had to life my hand to have enough power to depress a key with my little finger, he'd fail me. Short summer school class.

Computer memory have multiplied nearly exponentially. Even in the 1990's, when Hubby needed a laptop for school, we got an IBM Thinkpad with--wait for it--750Mb! That was HUGE at that time.

I remember when remote controls for tv's were new. OMG! To not have to get up to change the channel? What a godsend!

What else has changed? There are post-its. Minor things, but oh so handy.

 

At school we had one computer room full of BBC Masters with actual floppy disks. I think we might have gone in there twice during 7 years of secondary school.

In September (I'm a teacher now) we are moving into a brand new £39m building where every classroom has computers and interactive whiteboards as well as each department having 30 laptops.

Since I've started working in schools I've seen the change from VHS to DVD and now all of our videos are being uploaded to a website where we can access them. We also have interactive versions of our classroom text books where you can show the book pages on an interactive whiteboard. It allows you to click on a section of text or a picture from the book and it will play a section of video relevant to the text or show an interaction animation.

The new school is going to cashless as well (we are a little behind on this one). Parents will be able to load up dinner money on cash cards through the school website. When the student swipes their card at the till there picture is displayed to make sure that it's their card. I used to work at a school that used thumb prints instead of cash cards for the same purpose.

 

Horseshit.

I don't often agree with Christian apologists, but if you will take the trouble to actually read their responses to rubbish like The God Who Wasn't There, you will find that your position has been thoroughly debunked.

Saying that "it's debatable that Jesus ever existed" is like saying "it's debatable that the Holocaust ever happened" or "it's debatable that we went to the Moon." It's tinfoil-hattery.

Jesus of Nazareth was an historical figure. Jesus Christ, by contrast, is a figure of myth and legend.

What's more: Jesus Christ is regarded by Christians as a god--one of the three figures of the Christian Trinity--the "dominus" in "anno domini".

No. The problem here is that you don't know what you're talking about, and are stubbornly persisting in your own error, 'as a dog returns to its vomit.'

In fact--that's one of the worst arguments I've ever heard. Let's go through that line by line.

Wrong. In fact--the religion didn't even exist when the man was alive. See Barrie Wilson's How Jesus Became Christian for some recent scholarship on this subject.

Arguing that "you cannot separate Christianity from Jesus" is like arguing "you cannot separate astronomy from Copernicus" or "you cannot separate physics from Newton."

In fact, you not only can separate these things--you must. Subsequent research has shown that what both Copernicus and Newton said was only approximately true. Their works now possess only historical significance.

Irrelevant. It is possible to recognize the religious-historical significance of Jesus of Nazareth without believing that he was god.

In fact, the Islamic calendar does something just like this, by using the Hijra--the emigration of Mohammed and his followers to Medina--as its epoch.

And that is the problem that you are perversely refusing to recognize. That the terms BC and AD explicitly refer to Jesus, not as a man, but as a god--as Christ, and Lord. "Anno domini" is a contraction of a longer phrase--anno domini nostri iesu christi--"the year of our Lord Jesus Christ."

As I said: to use either term is to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. That may seem like a trivial thing to you. But it's a very serious matter to other people.

Take Jewish people, for example--some of whom consider it taboo even to write the word "Lord":

Source: Jewish Virtual Library.

I have already explained--three times, now--why the difference between BCE/CE and BC/AD is not simply a matter of semantics.

Those two expressions do not mean the same thing. Not in practice, and not in theory. If they did mean the same thing, then there wouldn't be a problem.

You may not think so, but other people are smart enough to recognize a distinction without a difference when they see one. This is a distinction with a difference, whether you're willing to acknowledge it, or not.

 

Then let me ask out of honest curiosity: why is the birth of Jesus of Nazareth the defining moment for our calendar? Why does the "Common Era" begin there?

Bad analogy. The cosmos exist regardless of what astronomers say about them.

Are you really trying to say that Christianity would still exist today if Jesus hadn't been around? Whether he was the true Lord or not, you can't separate Jesus from Christianity without removing the whole second half of the Bible. You don't have to believe he was the savior (I sure don't), but you can't just pretend he wasn't there.

 

1995.

 

Calcutta -- Kolkata
Bombay -- Mumbai

Just wanted to get the spellings out there. And it's not an official name change, but Delhi is often called Dilli.

 

And if non-Christians are offended at using a calendar dated from Jesus' birth, then why should Christians not also feel offended if that calendar was abolished? You can't satisfy everybody these days.

 

The calendar remains the same, it is still 2010.

But it is usually referred to as 2010 CE, not 2010 AD. That's the "C" in both BCE and CE--an acknowledgement that this is the "Common" calendar for a "Common Era," regardless of the religious origin of the calendar.

So the calendar is not being abolished and Christians need not be offended. Hell, their calendar is the "common" calendar for the Western nations (and the world in general). As for re-dating to a "new" event as a matter of "principle" ... why bother? It'd just confuse everything in history books and the "CE" is sufficient.

 

And we don't have to use those damn stardates.

FWIW, I'm not offended by the use of BCE/CE as opposed to BC/AD. And I can understand why non-Christians might be offended at the use of a calendar dated from Jesus' birth. But even if they are, changing the calendar system (by re-dating the whole thing from a different beginning year) to avoid offending them, would simply *start* offending Christians. That shouldn't be any more acceptable, IMHO.

 

Not all Christians believe in the Trinity, you know.

So all that stuff that's been happening recently in Mumbai has actually been happening in Bombay? I swear to God, I thought they were two different cities. Guess I've been out of the loop for a while.

So is Bollywood now called Mollywood?

 

Why would Common Era offend Christians? It's not as if it's changed to say "In the year of that guy who was not the Lord" or something.

 

^ Some of us just need to lighten up, I guess.

I *do* get kind of annoyed at 'Xian' and 'Xmas', but not this.

 

It's more insulting to someone with a brain. You rename it to CE, as if that somehow changes the fact that we're still counting away from the same religious year we were before? If you don't have the balls to change the underlying issue, then don't bother with half-###ing it. What the hell is a "common era" anyway? It's not any more common than what came before. In fact, I'd say everything prior to 1712 is "common" and everything since is "pretty remarkable" with the steam engine, industrial revolution, economics, laser beams and all that other crap.

Posted by STR Aug 16, 298 P.R.

 

I'm sorry, I should have made myself clearer. I meant that it is debatable that the Jesus portrayed in the bible ever existed. Most likely there was a man:

Who was part of the inspiration for

I don't think we're actually in disagreement here.

By some Christians, yes.

There's no need to be so rude. Are you not mature enough to partake in grown-up debate?

EXACTLY. Which is why trying to separate Jesus from Christianity -- the man whose life started the religion, is utterly ridiculous.

Now, that's one of the worst analogies I've ever heard. The cosmos aren't a religion based on the lives and teachings of Copernicus and Newton!

This is true, and completely irrelevant to the conversation.

I'm not disagreeing with you here.

And that is the problem that you are perversely refusing to

Um, not really. Calm down.
You know, upon reading the rest of your post I've decided you're not even worth debating with. You make some interesting arguments, but you are nasty and rude. I don't usually give up on debates, as people around here know. But I also don't debate with childish pseudo intellectuals. Bye bye.