Is that what you are referring to? does that help?

You can call yourself by any name it doesn't make you one.

I could call myself a cowboy...doesn't mean I can rope a steer.

So do names designate people or do actions?

Or do both together?

Being a catholic is based on belief, a cowboy, not so much.

If you want to claim that Hitler was a pretend-Catholic, can I claim that Stalin was a pretend-atheist?

to be atheist you have to cease counting years in Jesus terms

Such a pragmatic solution.

lol

Don't take my word for it. Listen to the man himself...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-m0bUd1ofw

I don't think most practicing Buddhists would call themselves atheists. I think non-theist is more accurate. God is defined differently in Buddhism, but there are gods, devas and deities. So you can't say there is an absence of god.

Aren't there chrisitian groups that live on communes? Wouldn't that make them communists to a certain degree? No personal property and what not?

no that doesn't make you atheist but you aren't atheist until you drop the Jesus years paradigm. Democracy too is another religion. One could say you have to adhere to it in order to live but regardless I've never met anyone that thinks outside terms of Jesus years. Also most people celebrate Jesus holidays as well. Monarchy is another religious belief, easy to identify than democracy.

Wait. You were serious? LOL

How exactly am I supposed to 'drop' the Jesus years paradigm? I guess I could name the years after Mac operating systems. This is year Mountain Lion.

Sounds just as sane to me as counting from something we don't really believe in.

Edit: also when you laugh I know that you are understanding exactly what I am saying, its the Jesus years that stop us from time travel. Its a false construct. Just like the sun going around the earth, or the earth around the sun.

Now you are changing things up. You said it was futile. Since people have changed their minds on God questions i dont think it is. Whether or not its good is another question.

Without arguing one way or another I think it has to be somewhat good to not be futile

I thought we showed it was not futile? Not that there is anything wrong with doing things that are futile.

Agreeing to be cannibalized probably indicates a lack of mental capacity to consent and therefore shouldn't be able to enter into a marriage (contract).

Given how romanticized the life of Steve Jobs has become for many, I believe it is perfectly acceptable to base our new system directly on the life of Steve Jobs.

Luke 2:5-7 (modestly revised)
5 Abdulfattah went there to register with Joanne, who was pledged to be married to him in secret and was expecting a child. 6 While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, 7 and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son, Steve Jobs. She wrapped Steve in cloths and placed him in adoption, because there was no room available for unwed mothers in Wisconsin.

From this point forward, the designation for years shall be reassigned such that they coincide with the birth of Steve Jobs. All years before the birth of Steve Jobs shall be labeled BSJ and all those years after his birth ASJ. For example:

In the 57th year of our Lord Steve Jobs, so arrived the Mac OS X Mountain Lion, iOS 6, and the retinal vision of the MB Pro.

Are all parties now satisfied?

While almost certainly correct, that's another issue entirely.

I like it. Now getting those heathen Windows users to convert may not be easy. I recommend iCrusade.

no youre still thinking in Jesus terms but you just changed the name and person of the construct you use.

No, you are the one stuck on that. The system we have in place currently uses the time between equinoxes, for instance the time between the vernal equinoxes. In other words all we do to measure off one year is make certain that the earth has rotated about the sun one full time. Outside of the that, Jesus' birth was just a convenient reference point that humanity decided was zero and is otherwise not particularly significant. The birth of Jobs is similarly another convenient reference point around another theoretically pivotal historical figure. Either reference point, again each of which is merely convenient and not at all necessary, doesn't change the primacy of the unit involved as by far the most important construct of the calendar system we use.

Unless you think being an atheist is incompatible with the demonstrable and objective fact that it takes somewhere on the order of 365 days and several minutes for the earth the rotate about the sun, your logic is mired in fail (that is if you were being serious, which I really hope you weren't).

If all those bigs words you wrote prove your point then the Mayans etc should have a central figure that denotes year zero for them. If they don't then I'd suggest putting Jobs as year zero is really just thinking in Jesus terms.

As for the number 365 youre just spouting base 10 conditioning as is the earth rotating around the sun. Things taught to you in school, forced by government traceable to monarchy, supported and fueled by the clergy.

These are Jesus ideas.

LOL?

No, no, no, you have it all wrong. All my words did was demonstrate that ANY point is a suitable reference point, and not even just those points related to historically significant figures. Our calender scale is based upon objective criteria that remain wholly independent of reference point and this is the reason why the reference point being Jesus' birth is absolutely irrelevant. All that the scientifically arbitrary use of Jesus' birth as our axis origin does is allow us to use our non-arbitrary scale of years (with the unit of years being based again upon objective and independent criteria w/o regards to Jesus or any other reference point) to pinpoint historical events to some timeline. Shifting the origin of the timeline, i.e. the zeropoint, does NOTHING to affect the relationship between other historical events whatsoever. All that is important in reality is that everyone understand the system of reference currently in place such that intelligible discussion regarding items of significant historicity may occur. For that matter even if EVERY society changed their reference point to some culturally significant historical event, as long as we all measured in units of earths rotation around the sun, conversion between systems would be simple, not unlike conversion between Kelvins and Celsius.

Even in the case that I accept Jesus' birth as the reference point for some timeline scaled in years, what the **** does that have to do with not being atheistic? Is it really not conceivable that an atheist doesn't care what the reference point is and will simply continue to utilize the current convention out of pragmatism??

You really are a very silly young man.