They are nihilistic reality/nihilistic psychology (pure materialism and skepticism), nihilistic reality/meaning-laden psychology (into which I would lump post-modernism, the more hopeful versions of existentialism, the more skeptical versions of theism, and non-theistic philosophies like Buddhism), meaningful reality/nihilistic psychology, meaning-laden reality/meaning-laden psychology.
Life itself is a contradiction to the laws of materialism, so by its nature (which is purpose and intelligence) it is opposed to the concepts of skeptical materialism. So there is an inevitable push, one might argue toward an absurd view of the universe because life itself is quite absurd, in its nature. It contradicts the fundamental physical realities of the world. It resist them defies them, carries ends and content outside them. It’s such a peculiar beast that it’s inevitably absurd. It must be to be what it is, to survive in the face of a physical universe whose trend seems to be all against it. It’s so absurd that it makes us wonder, then, whether the universe is an radlndom and chaotic and meaningless as it seems. If perhaps there really isn’t an underlying intelligence and purpose and meaning to it, as we find eithin ourselves and within life having found something that doesn’t fit in the boxes, is it possible to expand or collapse them? Is life and its nature merely a curious illusion and the true reality contradicts our experience of the data we possess closest to ourselves (that of ourselves, of life’s existence). Or can our idea of the true reality be expanded? Is the world really more like life? Does life show (by being in it) that the universe has inherent purpose and intelligence and meaning and things beyond materialist reality? These questions seem not only valid, but inevitable.
Making Nobody Happy 