Words and meanings change over time and depending on the context. Strangely you claim it's ignorance but then give supporting reasons why someone might label this "rationalism".
Rationalism is an important term in exactly the field they are supposed to be interested in. And they're using it in more or less the opposite of its conventional sense.
I guess it could be just really perverse usage, but I figure it's more like 'objectivism', or 'scientology', words that sound big and impressive to people who are either dumb, or just not very well informed.
You can't really change a term like rationalism, since it's really one of the biggest terms in philosophy, and philosophers are the kind of people who get upset when people use stuff like 'begging the question' wrong, which everybody does. So even if the 'rationalists' ended up having loads of great insights despite their inauspicious start, it would almost certainly never change the meaning of the word.
3. "a position requiring the observance of restrictive standards of the scientificity of knowledge"
Also from: Williams B., Rationalism, [w:] D.M. Borchert (red.), Encyclopedia of Philosophy, t. VIII, Thomson Gale, 2006, s. 239-247, ISBN 0-02-866072-2.
Rationalism in the enlightenment
The term rationalism is often loosely used to describe an
outlook allegedly characteristic of some eighteenth-
century thinkers of the Enlightenment, particularly in
France, who held an optimistic view of the power of sci-
entific inquiry and of education to increase the happiness
of humankind and to provide the foundations of a free
but harmonious social order. In this connection “ratio-
nalistic” is often used as a term of criticism, to suggest a
naive or superficial view of human nature that overesti-
mates the influence of benevolence and of utilitarian cal-
culation and underestimates both the force of destructive
impulses in motivation and the importance of such non-
rational factors as tradition and faith in the human econ-
omy. Jean d’Alembert, Voltaire, and the Marquis de
Condorcet, among others, are often cited in this connec-
tion. Although there is some truth in these criticisms, the
naïveté of these and other Enlightenment writers has
often been grossly exaggerated. Also, insofar as “reason” is
contrasted with “feeling” or “sentiment,” it is somewhat
misleading to describe the Enlightenment writers as
rationalistic, for many of them (Denis Diderot, for exam-
ple) characteristically emphasized the role of sentiment.
Reason was praised in contrast with faith, traditional
authority, fanaticism, and superstition. It chiefly repre-
sented, therefore, an opposition to traditional Christian-
ity.
Here there are two contrasts with the seventeenth-
century rationalism of Descartes and others. First, this
rationalism is not characteristically antireligious or non-
religious; on the contrary, God in some sense, often in a
traditional sense, plays a large role in rationalist systems
(although Spinoza’s notion of God was extremely
unorthodox, and it is notable that the opposition of rea-
son and faith is important in his Tractatus Theologico-
Politicus). Second, the view of science held by such
Enlightenment thinkers as Voltaire was different from
that of rationalism, being much more empiricist. The
central contrast embodied in the term rationalism as
applied to the earlier systems is that of reason versus
experience, a contrast that is certainly not present in the
Enlightenment praise of the “rational.”
I guess contemporary history of philosophy is kind of a modern product, so it makes sense that it might have been used in a different way back in the day. A lot of historical rationalists considered themselves empiricists, and vice versa. It's also not a term contemporary to like, Descartes (iirc).
I think the current meaning of rationalism (as opposed to empiricism) is vastly more useful than it as yet another 'good-ism', but you're probably right, words can change. It's still stupid that they didn't bother googling the term before calling themselves it.
I guess it could be just really perverse usage, but I figure it's more like 'objectivism', or 'scientology', words that sound big and impressive to people who are either dumb, or just not very well informed.
You can't really change a term like rationalism, since it's really one of the biggest terms in philosophy, and philosophers are the kind of people who get upset when people use stuff like 'begging the question' wrong, which everybody does. So even if the 'rationalists' ended up having loads of great insights despite their inauspicious start, it would almost certainly never change the meaning of the word.