Sunday, April 18, 2010

Russell's Syndrome

This is an excellent piece of terminology, from Janes Hannam.

Blair’s conversion led to one columnist making a fool of himself. Matthew Parris, who is usually quite sensible, has a bad case of Russell’s syndrome. Regular readers will know that this condition afflicts men and women of high intelligence who are, in most respects, indistinguishable from their fellow members of the academic elite. However, the sufferer of Russell’s Syndrome (first identified in the third Earl [Bertrand] Russell), looses (sic) all his common sense, discrimination and reason when his mind turns to religion.

2 comments:

Joshua Blanchard said...

This is a good quote. Even in high school I was surprised and confused by the poor quality of, e.g., Russell's Why I am not a Christian. I still don't quite understand it, and probably would require biographical details to do so. Many Christian undergraduates could produce better atheology!

Steven Carr said...

'Matthew Parris, who is usually quite sensible, has a bad case of Russell’s syndrome'

'However, the sufferer of Russell’s Syndrome (first identified in the third Earl [Bertrand] Russell), looses (sic) all his common sense, discrimination and reason when his mind turns to religion.'

i did wonder why Matthew Parris was so far gone as to claim that Africa needed Christian missionaries.

James Hannam explains why. parris has simply lost his mind when it comes to religion.

The sad evidence for this can be read here

Read it and weep for a person who 'is usually quite sensible' according to James Hannam.