Quote - *"Even the atheist/agnostic BCE/CE is still based on a presumption of when the birth of Jesus Christ occurred"

*No- we use that zero point for political expediency only (ATM)
We do not assume anything inherently special about that date. It is nothing but the baggage of history we all carry.

Actually, I looked it up: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_era

Turns out they were using the designation (also called the "Vulgar Era") for centuries now. I honestly didn't know that before yesterday...

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Quote - More still, since time is relative it seems unlikely that you could have a one size fits all calender, particularly once there is space travel and year lengths vary from planet to planet.

A-yep. This is part of why you see the whole "stardate" thing in Star Trek. You'll have to ask a hardcore fan how it works and what it's based on, though.

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Quote - and remember that G-d NEVER intended that the Torah be considered as a Scientific Textbook, [and therefore one in which no generation before Charles Darwin could have possibly understood

This I can agree with (probably because I'm Catholic and not a fundamentalist, eh?)

Quote - I DO believe though that it is interesting that the Hebrew Calender seems to date from the beginning of Recorded History.

It sounds about right... though if one bases a year on a true Solar orbital circuit and not just the lunar cycles, it's liable to be off by quite a bit by now. I take it the Hebrew calendar doesn't correct for anything outside of a strict lunar cycle, yes?

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Quote - Quote - " in not hundreds - of symbols to write things down. Very few people could actually read and write in pictographs."

Well, two or three billions do it today.

...I think he meant back during a time when literacy rates were crap, even among the Chinese. :)

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Quote - I'm certain it would be pretty tough to teach me pictographic writing.

It's not that hard... just depends on how long you study it and at what age you start. A gent that I work with is fluent in three languages - Mandarin (and a local Shanghai dialect), French, and English... he's shooting for number four (German, as our global headquarters is in Germany). I'm good with just 1-1/2 (English, and the Swiss dialect of German that I grew up with. The latter drives my colleagues overseas nuts at times, especially on the phone, where I usually forget that I have to forcibly ditch my normal Southern US accent first. :) ).

One thing I've noticed about my colleague is that as he piles on the languages (remember, English is his third, after French), things tend to get slurred down a bit - seems the human tongue has a muscle memory of sorts. In speech, his Chinese is fluid, and in French he has to stop once in awhile - not to think, but to work over certain syllables. His English is definitely accented heavily and takes a lot of time. His German speech is worse than mine, but improving. Gotta give him props for doing it, though - and his command of literacy in all of those languages is second to none, IMHO.