If you spout enough gobbledygook, can you convince yourself of anything?

Stanley Fish writes, in the New York Times:

In the opening sentence of the last chapter of his new book, “Reason, Faith and Revolution,” the British critic Terry Eagleton asks, “Why are the most unlikely people, including myself, suddenly talking about God?” His answer, elaborated in prose that is alternately witty, scabrous and angry, is that the other candidates for guidance — science, reason, liberalism, capitalism — just don’t deliver what is ultimately needed. “What other symbolic form,” he queries, “has managed to forge such direct links between the most universal and absolute of truths and the everyday practices of countless millions of men and women?”

I read the whole thing, but I can’t see what Fish and Eagleton are on about. It seems to me they are putting up red herrings right and left so they can shoot them down. I guess my main question, though, has to do with “practices.” What practices are necessary to link to the “universal and absolute of truths?” What do they mean by “absolute of truths?”

Personally, I don’t believe in absolute truth, unless you are speaking of a mystical sense of knowledge that feels numinous and forever. As to practices, it seems to me that anything will do.

However, this argument seems to me to be so full of unexplained terms that it amounts to a bunch of gobbledygook. And yet, this nonsense gets printed in the New York Times! Opinion page, but still….. Not all opinions are created equal, it seems to me.

Can academics get away with anything? If there is no way of applying science, can you say whatever you want, and just assert it to be true? Is there any way to counter this kind of nonsense which is as slippery and malleable as a schmoo?