calendarThe current method of measuring years (2011 AD, 520 BC, etc) is based around Jesus’s (presumed) year of birth.
Has there ever been an athiest/secular method of measuring dates? If not, what would/should its epoch be?
Historically I am not aware of any, but you could just choose to use Common Era instead. It's exactly the same as the BC / AD Christ-based system, but Wikipedia suggests it was used by common people to distinguish from regnal dates, and that it's also used by some Jews simply because they don't agree with the connotation of "year of our lord."
An alternative calendar (that isn't still correlated with the Anno Domini dating (as is a problem with CE/BCE)) is the Holocene revision. It introduces a "Human Era" component, making it an anthropic calendar, as opposed to a deity based one. This year would be 12011 based on the calendar.
Some highlights from humankind's time on earth include:
It's interesting to see historical Jesus, who dates the Anno Domini schema, added into the flow of human life as part of a continuum.
This’d be almost as bad an idea as ditching the leap day system because it was introduced by a Pope.
Remember that many "systemic" artifacts like calendars, railroad gauges, postal systems, time-standards, etc. are the result of who was in power when the decision was made that a "standard" was needed.
We could build the world's largest calendar, assert its pre-eminence and then expect the world to join our "correct" interpretation. There's recent precedent we might follow.
Further, it is a frequent effort of power hungry dictators to wipe out any memory of their competitors' or forebears by renaming everything in site. The victors rewrite history, eh? That's why we celebrate Christmas, not Solstice; Candlemas, not Imbolg; All Hallows Eve, not Samhain. And that's just to note a few of the Christian co=optings of Pagan dates/names/celebrations.
The power to NAME is zealoulsy desired. There is some small level of truth to the saying, "In the beginning was the word." The power of self-naming, self-determination is critical. Think how much we argue about the moniker "atheist" applied to us by believers some 2,500 years ago... it remains a shackle to this day. (I'll leave that soapbox for other days.)
As a part of the French Revolution, there was a short-lived effort to redefine time measurements in a manner similar to the metric system, but it proved too wildly difficult to implement.
http://www.webexhibits.org/calendars/calendar-french.html
If I recall correctly, Japanese count the years by the reign of the current emperor, but you could probably argue that that method is also religion-based.
The Calendrier républicain also call Calendrier révolutionnaire français was between 1792 and 1806 (and for a few month in 1871) :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_Calendar
The republic of China also has its republican calendar :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minguo_calendar
There was a few other epoch base on particular event, like the establishment of the Fascist government in Italy in 1922.
Computer system use an epoch of UTC of January 1, 1970.
I think finding an epoch that is acceptable to everybody is going to be quite a challenge.
Today is 4.3233e+17 seconds from the big bang. Totally scientific, albeit difficult to discern individual years (or 100 million years).
There's the Minguo calendar used by Taiwan that uses the founding of the Republic of China as the epoch.
Julian Day is used in the Julian date (JD) system of time measurement for scientific use by the astronomy community. Julian date is recommended for astronomical use by the International Astronomical Union.
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