To B(C) or not to B(C)

Recently, the Daily Mail’s (what a rag it is, and I’m a Tory!) gotten into a bit of a fluster about how the BBC, apparently, is discontinuing the suffixes BC and AD (Before Christ and Anno Domini) as it’s “offensive to non-Christians”. This isn’t the case, but there’s a  valid point to be gained here.

I am a non-Christian – in fact, I’m quite strongly against the idea of organised religion at all; I believe it has done nothing but harm humanity and hobbled it’s progress for over a thousand years  - but not offended by the use of the terms BC and AD, because even if we compare them to the nasty atheist “substitutions” BCE and CE (Before Common Era and Common Era) , they both refer to essentially the same year as “year zero”. 0AD and 0CE are the same thing. They both use the same calendar on which to base the years, it’s just a terminology or linguistics thing.

So what’s the big deal? It’s a linguistics thing, not some over-the-top political-correctness-gone-mad thing. The thing the Mail loves to go on about rightly, but more often wrongly.

As an atheist, I have to, regardless of my personal views, acknowledge that religion has had an indelible effect on our culture and heritage. There are many, many beautiful buildings used as churches across the UK, we have St Paul’s Cathedral, hell, even the Sistine Chapel is a masterpiece. It would be cutting my nose off to spite my God-rejecting face to say these buildings or edifices should be done away with just because of the circumstances in which they were constructed or the purposes for which they are used.

Religious buildings can indeed be beautiful, and we should cherish them for that. What happens inside, well, maybe not so much.

It’s like a common exclamation I make is “oh my God!” or it’s variant “for God’s sake!”. My using of these phrases doesn’t mean every time I stub my toe I’m renouncing my atheism and accepting the idea there’s an invisible man in the sky. It’s purely a linguistics thing, and shouldn’t be taken on face value. I’m sure a lot of atheists say the same things too.

Not everything is a religious slight, Daily Mail. I also love how their agenda seems to be that Islam and Muslims are wicked and to be mistrusted and Christianity is a harmless old comfort that should be preserved for “traditional English values” and everyone should leave off picking on. Wrong. Both are as bad as each other.