John Robbins in his incisive "The Crisis of Our Time," an essay that appears at the end of every book published by Trinity Foundation, names the 20th Century as the Age of Irrationalism, the legacy of misology’s hatred, hostility, and rejection of logic. He believed that irrationalism (anti-intellectualism) controls our entire culture. His research convinced him that "Contemporary …intellectuals are anti-intellectual. Contemporary philosophers are anti-philosophy. Contemporary theologians are anti-theology." (John Robbins' The Trinity Manifesto, p.1.)
Nonsense Has Come
The irrationalism of the present age is so thoroughgoing and pervasive that even the Remnant…has accepted much of it. … In some circles, this irrationalism has become synonymous with piety and humility, and those who oppose it are denounced as rationalists – as though to be logical were a sin. Our contemporary anti-theologians make a contradiction and call it a Mystery. The faithful ask for truth and given Paradox. If any balk at swallowing the absurdities of the anti-theologians, they are frequently marked as heretics or schismatics who seek to act independently of God.
There is no greater threat facing the true church of Christ … than the irrationalism that now controls our entire culture. …Hedonism, the popular philosophy of America, is not to be feared so much as the belief that logic – that "mere human logic," to use the irrationalists’ own phrase – is futile. The attacks on truth, on revelation, on the intellect, and on logic are renewed daily. But note well: The misologists …use logic to demonstrate the futility of logic. The anti-intellectuals construct intricate intellectual arguments to prove the insufficiency of the intellect. The anti-theologians use the revealed Word of God to show that there can be no revealed Word of God – or that if there could, it would remain impenetrable darkness and Mystery to our finite minds. (Robbins, The Trinity Manifesto-A Program for Our Time)
The Result?
As the author of the The Closing of the American Mind reports: most students believe that truth is relative.
There are no absolutes, no universal truths of any kind. What is true for one may be false for another. And the reverse may be the case tomorrow, or the next day, week, month, or year. The statement itself, namely, that there are no absolutes, no universal truths of any kind is not an absolute, not a universal truth. Is it true that there are no truths? (If it is true, then it is false.) The statement is true for one, false for another, and this may reverse itself tomorrow. There is no contradiction, for there is no Law of Contradiction. If these propositions reduce to nonsense, so be it.
Thus "reasons" the relativist-misologist of our time. In his desire to suppress truth, all truth, he yields to nonsense. In so choosing, he seeks to escape all accountability to his Creator, denies all responsibility, and avoids all reasoned argument or explanation for or against any claim or position. He floats in a sea of ambiguity, restless, confused, and miserable. In his pride, he casts off all seriousness with "If this be self-deception, so be it."
Of course, no person lives in accordance with this axiom. As a practical matter, the misologist lives as if logic is necessary with premises that function as universal truths. He seeks to communicate his claims in propositions, meanings that convey truth and reason. Indeed, he realizes that no society can function on the absurd notion that all truth is relative. So he seeks an interpretation that avoids all talk of absolutes but falls short of nonsense.
He creates a virtual reality "as-if-world." Our misologist behaves as if all truth is relative using some statements as "benchmarks." According to this view, what is true is what most people in a society agree to treat as a benchmark for decision, action, behavior, or choice. Thus if the consensus establishes a benchmark-statement that stealing money from a bank is a crime, then any statement that denies this benchmark-statement is considered false - by consensus. Truth remains relative in origin and status, relative to the consensus and dodges any claim to universality. Any consensus-benchmark may change as society evolves, mutates, or decides to change.
Meaning?
The notion that a proposition is the meaning of a declarative sentence is banished, or so it is claimed. Meanings do not come in packets (subjects and predicates) of truth or falsity according to notions of correspondence or coherence, or a process of discovery, or revelation. Gone are the problems of determining when or how something corresponds to reality. Whose reality? What reality? Coherence suffers a similar fate, for the test of coherence establishes nothing. And if the axioms are not universal, the system of coherence itself is relative. To "tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God" is mere ritual lingo for telling a story as I see it or as someone else imagines.
One wonders how a detective can solve any crime given these presuppositions.
Of course, if everything is indeed meaningless, how could anyone know that it is? For if meaninglessness is the end product of all thought and life, and nothing truthful can be known about reality and existence, how could anyone discover this fact? Meaninglessness banishes not only all truths but all knowledge, including the knowledge of a meaningless life.
With Irrationalism, nonsense has come. Moreover, it cannot pause to reason or construct hypotheses to test its presuppositions. For mere human reason (logic) is futile; there is nothing to falsify. What remains is the celebration of an old philosophy: eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die. The 21st Century will be named the Age of Hedonistic-Nihilism, for passive nihilism seeks to rest in the exhaustion of pleasure as a substitute for the nihilism’s end point: suicide.
Not only has nonsense come but ushers in an Age of Insanity.
1. If all is meaningless, then all propositions are nonsense.
2. All is meaningless; there is no meaning.
3. .:. All propositions are nonsense. (Including this one.)
But note: no misologist, a true believer of his own axioms of meaningless in life and reality, would or could argue as above. The misologist is robbed of any argument and is left to live and die in "…madness and blindness and confusion of heart." (Deuteronomy 28:28)