“If English-speaking Christians can keep using “Thursday” (Thor’s Day), then non-Christians using the Gregorian calendar can use “B.C.” and “A.D.” without violating their consciences. Otherwise, they can try to get on with the Islamic calendar (1447 AH), Hebrew Calendar (AM 5786), Buddhist calendar (2569–2569 or 2564–2565 depending on location), Chinese calendar (4719, 4720, 2724, 4725, depending on . . . stuff), Ethiopian calendar (2018), Hindu Calendar (2083 VS), Aldous Huxley calendar (AF 118)”
This was exactly the problem.
So the global scientific community got together and agreed to use the Gregorian calendar, introduced in 1582 as a replacement for the flawed Julian calender before it as the common time epoch. In doing so since there are 8+ billion now and over 7 billion when it was decided with only a minority fraction of that total being judeo-christian religious references were not used. It is that simple anything else is emotional semantics and irrelevant to a scientist we simply don’t care, it’s what gets published in accepted scientific journal papers or it won’t pass the peer reviews.
CE and BCE are the Georgian calendars equivalent of the meter or the kilogram they are the time epoch standard, the length standard and the mass standards in the accepted SI system period full stop.
Popular Science is not exactly a “Scientific Journal”. It is written for mass consumption. Scientific notation is used in scientific journals, but not nearly as often in news articles. It is a nuisance when Excel converts to it without being requested to.
We can do without the “full-stop” pedantry and the assignation of god-status to scientific journals and international bodies who take authority unto themselves. Outside of the “leap second” business, nothing was changed to the Gregorian Calendar except changing “AD” and “BCE”. There should be push back on these sorts of things.
Thanks for the logical take-but you might be called a heretic by a poster, soon...