RE: A New Calendar for Atheism
December 19, 2013 at 2:12 am
(This post was last modified: December 19, 2013 at 2:15 am by theyear12013.)
(December 19, 2013 at 2:01 am)Cinjin Wrote: The problem with changing the current year in which we live is that we have to change every date we've ever assigned the past so to avoid confusion and repeated mistakes. This doesn't seem like it would be a big deal, but I think it could get very tricky very quickly.
In truth, there's no date that would ever satisfy the entire world. Even scientists would debate with scientists over what the actual date should be.
Agreed it would disrupt computer programs and history books -- so it wouldn't be easy or practical to do without some big reason or an easy conversion method.
But a calendar system longer than 8000 years should be common enough for most of humanity no? And actually the whole world uses the Christian calendar so you can get them to agree actually based on the dominant superpowers ( European Colonialism and now US ). I think adding 10000 to our current year is a simple way to illustrate that biblical prophets are not central to humanity. Atheism has to take symbolism seriously and I think one of the most powerful symbols for the position of Christian Abrahamic faiths versus science is control of the calendar and the year. If your kids grew up thinking about 10000 years of human civilization rather than 2000, don't you think their horizons would be bigger and the idea of a bunch of middle eastern prophets would be much more irrelevant and seem small.