The Christian Post reports that Australian education officials are planning to edit the dates in textbooks by replacing the initials BC (Before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini, “in the year of our Lord”) with the secular alternatives BCE (Before Common Era) and CE (Common Era). Stop me if you’ve heard this one: local Christians are taking this move as a deliberate attempt to eradicate Christianity from Australia.
Fred Nile, a minister in New South Wales, told The Daily Telegraph that the announcement was a “final insult” to Christians in Australia and “an absolute disgrace.”
Nile said he feels the move is an attempt to remove any traces of Christianity from the country.
“The direction of the national curriculum is towards almost a Christian cleansing to remove from our history any references to the role Christianity had in the formation of Australia and still has today,” he told The Telegraph.
Personally, I don’t much care whether you say BC or BCE, any more than I care that Wednesday is a tribute to the Norse god Woden. Its mythological significance is too trivial to fuss over. But “Christian cleansing”? For a typographical substitution? That’s a bit over the top in my book. Save the “ethnic cleansing” insinuations for actual human rights violations please.
Fred Nile, if you think this is the “final insult” to christians in Australia, here is one for you.
Australian christians are so stupid that they allow the imbecile Fred Nile to preach to them. They haven’t figured out that there are no gods, angels, demons, ghosts or any other supernatural phenomena, none. And to top it off, they are so stupid that they pay good money to have some sanctimonious preacher lie to them.
It is an insult to humanity that so many believe lies. It is an insult to humanity that people are allowed to make a living telling lies to gullible people. Fred Nile, you are a lying parasite, exactly like every other preacher, missionary or religious authority.
I have often wondered why preachers need contributions from their flock. Isn’t god supposed to provide? An imaginary god provides imaginary support.
Fred “Porn was accessed from my office computers 200.000 times only to check on the Sex party” Nile is a Christian troglodyte who unfortunately finds himself and his Christian party currently in NSW in a position of political power in the upper house.
So yeah, he would say something like that.
The formation of Australia?!? The formation of Australia? It began as a penal colony! I’d think it’d be better to focus on how far Australia has come since then.
And as a side note, my Catholic HS had history textbooks that said BCE, and that wasn’t what made me give up on the religion. It was the hypocrisy and double standards.
You Wodenites make me heave.
What about Tiw, Freya and Thor? They get jealous you know.
BTW Woden, aka Wotan, was the Anglo-Saxon name for the Norse Odin.
(Don’t know if you’re in the market for some constructive criticism, but is there a better picture you could use? The one up now looks a little ‘manic’ IMO.)
From my understanding what is actually happening is that they want to bring the dating system in all new text books (I.E. not replace it in old ones) in line with the dating system currently used in most higher education textbooks. The common era dating system has been in most university and other higher learning centre texts for decades and the change is just to standardise it.
This.
Sadly it appears he may have already lost this one – I went through the Aussie education system (graduating 2006) and I have no bloody idea what relevance christianity has to the founding of this country. I even went to a christian high school (well, anglican, so close).
Seriously, any aussies know what particular relevance christianity has here? We’re convicts and immigrants, I think the indigenous stories have more relevance to Australia frankly, at least they should.
Maybe the christianity was why women couldn’t vote for so long…? I’ve got nothing, the man’s an idiot.
My understanding is that BCE/CE dates include the year 0, while BC/AD are Gregorian dates with no year 0 (Christ was thought be born in year 1, but the year before was 1 BC, not 0.). AD = CE, while BCE is shifted one year compared to BC as year 0 (B)CE is year 1 BC. I have been told CE dating was both an attempt at cleaning up all the unholy (pun intended) mess caused with date arithmetic with no year 0 and making the language more neutral. Can someone clarify? (Yes, this is part of all that fun around the first year of the 21st century, and the 3rd millennium, being 2001, not 2000, if using Gregorian dates.)