If religion had not happened at all what would the year be?

I’m not starting another is religion true/false thread. This is just a hypothetical bit of fun.Ok If religion never got started in the first place what would be the year? It wouldn’t be 2005 cause there wouldn’t have been the birth of Christ to pin year zero on.How would we count the years and from when would we count them? What event would we use as the moment to start counting?I would probably have to choose full planetary alignments (all in a row), which are rare enough, but would you re set the count after each one or pick just one.Also what if BC and AD hold no meaning would BCE and CE be applicable or would we use something else.Anyway so long as you hold the assumption that religion never happened what would the year be?Have fun

Cool, I was vaguely aware of that but it hadn’t actually crossed my mind in regard to this problem.Would Greece not be a more likely contender for setting a common year, a lot academic thought came out of there?In all the differing system were the years the same length?This message has been edited by ohnhai, 01-20-2005 19:59 AM

force of habit I guess.Out of interest what event, place person is year zero cantered on? (I know next to nothing about Chinese Mythology or ancient History.This message has been edited by ohnhai, 01-20-2005 21:04 AM

what!!! you have the first modelT !?!!?!

One thing people seem to have missed, surely if you re-run history sans religion and gods and all that, then virtually nothing in history would have been the same.
Would there have been a Roman empire? What shapes would the differing nations be, what forms of government would have arisen, would there have been more wars less wars.Feel free to invent and play.

and funnily enough I just realised ties in quite close to the chinese calender..... oooooh.

that's why I said have fun, speculate, invent play.

Kind of side steps the topic, the idea was to have a think and come up with an idea of how we would keep track of the years if history had happened with no religion or god’s, to be a bit inventive of what possible world this would give rise to and so on.How ever insightful, and you do make some good points, they are written as if we just remove the Christian faiths and run from there.If we re un history san religion of any kind then the Jewish calendar wouldn’t be the same, and in the same vain you can’t assume any currently excepted system or infrastructure to be in place.So suggesting some thing that ties in with our current year system is pointless in this little thought experiment as in our imaginary world it wouldn’t be 2005. and that is the underlying premise of this little game.I would lay money on more systems like the traditional Japanese way of doing things, Counting the years of each emperor, but as this hypothetical world has never had the concept of the divine you cant count on this system working because in our world the emperor was seen as divine. In our imaginary secular world that would never have been thought of, So with out the deification of kings and such would they have held the same power?As I said in my OP the best way would be to base zero on full planetary alignments, all of them in a line on one side of the sun. Apparently it is thought by some that they happen ever 6k years and the last one was in 2000, so as the previous one would have been seen as the starting point we could say this is the fifth year of the first division of the second progression. the fifth of the first of the second.