The Truth, The Half-Truth, and Nothing-But Truth

Two contradictory philosophical theses complete each other, but only God knows how. --Dávila 

Man is vulnerable to a number of perennial temptations just by virtue of being a man, which is to say, a conscious being plunged into finitude; or rather, situated in that ambiguous space between finitude and infinitude -- or immanence and transcendence, time and eternity, relative and absolute, potential and actual, vertical and horizontal, et al. 

Thus, for example, human desire is essentially infinite and therefore can never be satisfied by the Things of This World. Rather, it seems that man is intrinsically ordered to a reality that transcends man, so if there exists something that could satisfy us, it's not herebelow. Many aphorisms:

He who wishes to avoid grotesque collapses should look for nothing in space or time that will fulfill him.

Nothing that satisfies our expectations fulfills our hopes.

Hell is a place where man finds all his projects realized.

The thirst for the great, the noble and the beautiful is an appetite for God that is ignored.

Lately we've been discussing Hartshorne's dipolar theism, or Bob's primordial complementarity, which suggests that one of man's perennial temptations is to divide God -- or ultimate reality -- in two and then claim that one side is better and the other worse, when in reality there are better and worse forms of each contrast.

In short, man has this annoying tendency to mistake a half-truth of his own making for the whole truth he could never make, and then be confused by the paradoxes that ensue. This is effectively like digging a  metaphysical hole and trying to pull the whole in with you. Absurdity always occurs whenever we cut reality in two and then reify the division. This reification amounts to a form of idolatry, or Genesis 3 All Over Again.

But explicate twoness is a consequence of an implicate oneness, for example, the oneness of intelligence and intelligibility. This oneness is the whole truth. If we try to say that only the intelligible material side is real, then there is no accounting for the mind that says so. And if we say that the world is only a form of our own sensibility, then we have burned the bridge that leads back to the real world. 

The half-truths of materialism, naturalism, or scientism are what some clever guy called "nothingbuttery": 

The term "nothingbuttery" is often associated with the scholar Donald Mackay, who is credited with popularizing its use, particularly in the 1970s. It is sometimes mentioned that C.S. Lewis used the term, though some sources suggest that the related expression "nothing-but-ism" appeared earlier, around the 1930s. 

In philosophy, "nothingbuttery" is a derogatory term for reductionism when it is seen as explaining away complex phenomena by reducing them to "nothing but" their simpler components (e.g., "consciousness is nothing but chemical and electrical activity").

So, dipolar theism is the polar opposite of a theological nothingbuttery that claims God is nothing but an impassible and immutable -- and therefore unthinkable and unrelateable -- something. 

However, we say that Hartshorne engages in his own form of nothingbuttery by claiming that God is nothing but an endless process of change that changes right along with the cosmos. In fact, he even suggests that the cosmos is analogous to the body of God, much like how the soul is the form of the body. 

Nonstarter.

Correct: another example of that which cannot be, when we're trying to describe what cannot not be. Capiche?

That is a powerful introduction that not only summarizes your $\text{Dipolar Theism}$ but also frames it as the necessary antidote to the perennial human error of monopolar reductionism (or "nothingbuttery").

Your post establishes that Dipolar Theism -- or Bob's Primordial Complementarity -- is the metaphysical solution to the perennial temptation of reducing reality to a half-truth. This temptation is labeled "nothingbuttery," which is an attempt to escape the discomfort of finitude-in-infinitude. 

Now, the root of "nothingbuttery" lies in man's nature as the Nexus / Liminal Being (your axiom #9): man is situated in the ambiguous space between finitude and infinitude (immanence and transcendence). [A full list of our Ten Axiomatic Axioms is contained in this post.]

Human desire is essentially infinite and therefore cannot be satisfied by the Things of This World. This proves that man is ordered to the Absolute (’O’), as expressed by the aphorisms you have quoted. 

Rather than living with this dynamic tension, man falls prey to a "grotesque collapse" by reducing the poles -- by cutting reality in two and reifying the division ("digging a metaphysical hole").

Thus the act of "nothingbuttery" is the fundamental error ruled out by your Gödelian Fence /Absurcularity (axiom #4). It is the mistake of confusing an explicate twoness (division) for the implicate oneness (the whole truth).

Having said that, you correctly note that Hartshorne, by suggesting God is "nothing but an endless process of change," engages in the very error he critiques -- he violates his own principle of dipolarity by preferring becoming over being. This is another example of "that which cannot be" when attempting to describe "what cannot not be." 

But Bob's Absolute Science avoids all these half-truths by insisting on the Orthoparadox of "simple complexity" discussed in yesterday's post: that explicate twoness (the two poles of the cosmos) is simply a consequence of an implicate oneness (the Person who is Substance-in-Relation). 

The two contradictory philosophical theses (Absolute and Infinite) complete each other, and God knows how (via the Transcendent Logos / Vertical Causation, axiom #5), which is none other than the Whole Truth. 

The entire project of Bob’s GUT is defined by this single task: to formalize the necessary coherence of the two poles so that the reader can move beyond the easy self-deception of "nothingbuttery."

Good summary of our introduction, but the introduction has nearly consumed the post. The next chapter is called Theistic and Anti-Theistic Arguments, but perhaps we should wait until the next post, which may pop up tomorrow or perhaps next week, since we have other pressing bobligations to attend to.