Ultimately, it’s only a change of names, so rationally it is even less of an issue than “meter” vs. “foot”. I once saw a commentary on YouTube that joked that you could just pretend CE=”Christian Era” and AD=”Ascending Dates”/BC=”Backwards Counting”. There are certainly more important issues.

That being said, somehow this topic seems to trigger some people similarly to the debate between Vegetarianism and Mixed Diet. And just like there, I think the best solution is to let people decide for themselves. If someone wants to use AD/BC, it should be allowed. If someone wants to use CE/BCE, it should be allowed. And no historian should be forced or bullied into one system or the other. As for readers, if your distaste for one system is so great that you cannot bear its very mention in a book, then that’s your loss.

Personally, I do not think that CE/BCE is “better”. The problem of forcing e.g. Japanese people to use a Christian calendar is not addressed in any way shape or form by declaring the same Christian calendar to be the “common” calendar (of the whole of mankind?). For example “Western Era” would be more honest. Then again, nobody would want to say “double u e” or “b double u e” as an abbreviation.

Similarly, the “atheist” argument that an outright Christian reference stands in contradiction to secularism and neutrality is subverted by the fact that there are still religious references in time-keeping. E.g today is Tuesday, named after the god Tyr. Even as someone who does not believe in Tyr, I don’t have issues with that and do not think that we need to rename Tuesday. Therefore, I also do not think that we need to rename AD/BC. If religious references were unbearable, we would need to be consistent about it.

Another argument is that AD 1, to the best of our knowledge, was NOT the year Jesus was actually born, which subverts the whole point of a calendar based around that date. This would, ironically, make CE/BCE more accurate from a Christian perspective. Then again, who cares?

In matters of personal taste, I cringe every time I hear this horribly high pitched “CE” or, worse, “BCE”. But that’s subjective.