This is a television commercial from Macedonia and is part of a campaign to put religion back into schools there…. I have no opinion on whether Macedonians should do that I guess, but the ad is well done. One of their taglines is “Religion is knowledge too.”
Macedonia? Do they speak German in Macedonia?
I heartily agree with all the arguments, but this has the feel of one of those e-mail forwards you get from well-meaning friends and relatives. In real life, in my experience, no argument ever ends that neatly.
That’s why it’s merely a TV ad. I don’t think they’re trying to settle an argument — just get a seat at the table.
I don’t think they speak German in Macedonia, but Einstein spoke it when he was a kid, so I think that’s why they picked it for this ad.
>>Macedonia? Do they speak German in Macedonia?>>
Austrian in Macedonia, Lars. Pretty sure Austrian.
Macedonia is an interesting country that I’ve been taking a look at to maybe take a vacation to or, if the poo really hits the fan here to relocate too. They love Americans and have sort of shaped their country into what our’s was supposed to be; no corporate taxes, no property taxes, and only a 5% income tax with no additional sales tax. Hell, at this point they may be more American than we are.
God in schools?!?!?!? We can’t have that!!! It will be madness!!! The kids will…well, they’ll be…they umm…separation of church and state!!!
It should be on US TV. Just for the amusing noise it would create amoungst the chattering class.
That’s German! I didn’t know they speak German in Macedonia. Odd. Wikipedia says they speak “Macedonian” in Macedonia. I don’t think this comes from Macedonia.
It is a good ad and a well reasoned argument, however.
the media company that produced it made it for the government… perhaps they decided to make it viral. Or rather — it most likely had Einstein speaking German with Macedonian subtitles and they just put English subtitles for the Internets.
Vielleicht.
“Gott ist tot.” – Nietzsche, 1875
“Nietzsche ist tot.” – God, 1900
If the professor is supposed to be Einstein why is he teaching a class of children? And, Einstein would have gotten the question about “cold” correct and there is absolutely no way he would have missed the question about the nature of “light.”
Rufus, it’s the kid who’s supposed to be Einstein, at an early age.
The kid’s Einstein… Einstein.
I thought Einstein couldn’t speak until he was 17, or something like that. Besides, he went to a Catholic grade school. I really doubt that faux lecture was part of the lesson plan there.
I’m no Einstein, but this account seems consistent with what I know about the man and his beliefs, http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/religion/a/einstein_god.htm
So, Floyd, it seems like you got the Macedonia part wrong, and the Einstein part wrong, but aside from that your account is highly accurate.
I never said it was a true story. Einstein didn’t believe in the God of the Bible (or as I like to call Him — the One True God) — that much is pretty clear. I only repeated the fact given at the YouTube link that it was made for the government of the Republic of Macedonia so while I reported wrong information from another source I was in fact NOT wrong. I think Einstein was unable to speak until like 2d or 3d grade (or what we might call that). Thomas Sowell has an interesting piece on him on his book on “late talkers”. I also never said that the story was true so yet get I am NOT wrong. The student was most likely supposed to be Einstein. Even if an apocryphal story — still a pretty good commercial.
Are we CNN fact-checking SNL skits now?
I think I just got a brief, minor taste of what it’s like to live with Floyd 24/7. I have written Pope Benedict and asked that he fast-track Mrs. Turbo for sainthood.
Rufus… when it comes to Mrs. Turbo — I’m always wrong. This is my place to be right — even if rarely.
Macedonia, the homeland of Alexander the Great. Macedonian Greek or Koine Greek was the lingua franca of the Western world of the 1st century AD and the language of most of the New Testament. Koine Greek, in turn, became the basis for modern Greek and both are mutually intelligible.
The Republic of Macedonia — or the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia as the Greeks like to call it is different thatn Alexander’s Macedonia — which is now a region of modern Greece.
They’re even fighting over the name and it’s even contributed in keeping Macedonia out of NATO.
Because it’s rare anyone can under-intellectualize (or over-) Mr. Marcoe with fewer words (even if they aren’t mine). I don’t wanna hear it if I trumped ya on this one, too, Republibot3.0.
“ALEXANDER THE GREAT” by Iron Maiden
My son ask for thyself another
Kingdom for that which I leave
Is too small for thee
(King Philip of Macedonia – 339 b.c.)
Near to the east
In a part of ancient Greece
In an ancient land called Macedonia
Was born a son
To Philip of Macedon
The legend his name was Alexander
At the age of nineteen
He became the Macedon king
And he swore to free all of Asia minor
By the Aegian sea
In 334 B.C.
He utterly beat the armies of Persia
Alexander the great
His name struck fear into hearts of men
Alexander the great
Became a legend ‘mongst mortal men
King Darius the third
Defeated fled Persia
The Scythians fell by the river of Jaxartes
Then Egypt fell to the Macedon king as well
And he founded the city called Alexandria
By the Tigris River
He met King Darius again
And crushed him again at the battle of Arbela
Entering Babylon
And Susa treasures he found
Took Persepolis the capital of Persia
Alexander the great
His name struck fear into hearts of men
Alexander the great
Became a God ‘mongst mortal men
A Phrygian king had bound a chariot yoke
And Alexander cut the Gordian knot
And the legend said that who untied the knot
He would become the master of Asia
Helonism he spread far and wide
The Macedonian learned mind
Their culture was a western way of life
He paved the way for Christianity
Marching on marching on
The battle weary marching side by side
Alexander’s army line by line
They wouldn’t follow him to India
Tired of the combat, pain and the glory
Alexander the great
His name struck fear into hearts of men
Alexander the great
He died of fever in Babylon
Gott mit uns
Wonder if the Christian families who hid Jews and ended up in the concentration camps saw the irony of that on the belt buckles of Nazi soldiers?
Of course, if we follow the implicit logic of this example, then patriotism, martial valor, and German heritage are all damnable for being co-opted in twisted forms by the Nazi party. But let’s also try on a few quotes by Hitler himself:
“I am embarked on a struggle to the death with the Jews for the hearts and minds of men. The Jews have inflicted two wounds on mankind. Circumcision for the body, and conscience for the soul. I am come to free mankind from their bondage.”
“The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity. Bolshevism is Christianity’s illegitimate child. Both are inventions of the Jew.”
“‘You see, it’s been our misfortune to have the wrong religion. Why didn’t we have the religion of the Japanese, who regard sacrifice for the Fatherland as the highest good? The Mohammedan religion too would have been much more compatible to us than Christianity. Why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness?’”
Hitler used whatever was at hand to cement his power, as Napoleon had done before him. He gesticulated the accoutrements of German culture, while hollowing them out for his mad philosophy. Fascism has as much to do with Christianity as race does with superiority.
I like what Abraham Lincoln said (and I paraphrase), “Pray not that God is is on our side, but that we are on his.”
When Mussolini and his cohort invented Fascism, they called it a “working ideology of action,” or something along those lines. It was a patchwork quilt of other streams of thought and never had much intellectual, but instead drew on other things that men held dear, in a sort of kaleidoscope of sentimentalities, as a secular replacement for religion, as it was itself a type of religion. Nietzschean thought had some significant impact, but that was not the sole influence. If I’m correct, even Marxism was a kissing cousin to it.
The leadership of the SA was openly homosexual and Marxist and encouraged (and coerced) both in its ranks. The upper echelons practiced a form of quasi-German paganism, which had nothing to do with traditional Germanic paganism, in that it never demanded genocide or racial purity and it originated some of the concrete institutions that protected the liberties of later Western societies.
Correction: The upper echelons of the SS…
As a low key left footing god botherer I’m ok with this.