[ExI] 1984 and Orwell's Warnings

[Damien Broderick]

At 05:59 PM 5/20/2008 -0700, Lee wrote:

>For so many, It is not enough  to deny God and to
>repudiate religion and to completely reject such
>mysticism and prescientific thinking.  Oh no, they
>*must* go for much more: the Politically Correct
>instinct demands that every trace of "incorrect thought"
>be obliterated

My sense of this is that many Jewish scholars (who are, as we know, 
hugely more influential than their numbers might suggest, and who are 
not notorious for denying God) recommended BCE [before common era] 
because AD and BC are so palpably partisan, even if only as a 
fossilized metaphor. Fair enough, I say.

Oh, wait. Wikipedia says otherwise:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Era

<Originating among Christians in Europe at least as early as 1615 (at 
first in 
Latin),<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Era#cite_note-VulgarisAerae1-7>[8] 
Common Era notation has been adopted in several non-Christian 
cultures, by many scholars in religious studies and other academic 
fields,<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Era#cite_note-8>[9]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Era#cite_note-9>[10] 
and by others wishing to be sensitive to 
non-Christians.<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Era#cite_note-cst-10>[11] >

Damien Broderick