[ASA Vet]

BP is no sillier than the rest of the hundreds of dating systems developed over the past thousands of years.
I suppose it being fixed at 1950 doesn't really matter when it's used to refer to events millions or hundreds of millions of years ago.

Many of the current systems are based on some temporary (in geologic terms)super-naturalist belief system.
It would be real difficult to have a permanent dating system since nothing is permanent (except change.)

[geopyg]

I'm sure you heard the joke where the museum guide says "This dinosaur bone is 65 million and 4 years old". One of the tourists says that's amazing how he knows it so precisely. The guide says "Yep - when I started the museum director told me it was 65 million years old - and that was 4 years ago."