On 9/8/06, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 08/09/06, ScottL <scott(a)mu.org> wrote:
jayjg wrote:
> On 9/7/06, Mark Wagner <carnildo(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 9/6/06, jayjg <jayjg99(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>>> A significant difference being that
nobody worships the
>>> Norse/German/Roman gods these days
>> I know some neopagans who would be quite insulted by that statement.
> I doubt their numbers are in the billions,
or that they exert a
> dominating influence on Western culture.
Why should the size of a group/belief/idea
impact NPOV?
The idea above is evidently that the larger the group, the less their
POV should be taken seriously. So therefore we should put into place
changes that *no-one wants whatsoever* or we are in violation of NPOV.
Not really. To begin with, the claim that *no-one whatsoever* supports
this change is clearly not true. In addition, the argument is actually
that use of BC/AD further helps entrench Christian cultural
domination, which is already quite dominant based on Western history
and the sheer numbers of Christians in the world, and supports, to a
degree, an environment which has structural bias against
non-Christians. Those who support use of BCE/CE see this as being
inappropriate for countries which claim to endorse
multi-religious/multi-ethnic/multi-cultural societies, and which
strive to create environments which are welcoming to many religions,
not just Christianity. And the current risk of a neo-pagan,
Norse/Germanic/Roman god worshipping cultural domination being
entrenched by use of terms like "Saturday" and "Thursday" is, in my
view, pretty low.
Jay.