Lakeside Freethinkers Meeting Summary Sept. 18, 2025

[Lakeside Freethinkers]

President Lloyd Kumley opened the Zoom meeting at 4p.m. Chad announced that the meeting was being recorded. Lloyd stated that he had submitted the Freethinkers donation to LCS to cover the cost of the next university term's expenses for our sponsored student recipient, Fatima.   

The presentation today by Rich Birkett centered on the branch of Philosophy called ' Epistemology'..  It  basically focuses on  the question: "How do we know what is real?" and addresses the nature, sources, limits and forms of knowledge, There are 17 different theories concerning Epistemology listed on Wikipedia, which makes it a complicated  concept..

 Rich proceeded to review all of the salient points in his YouTube video on this subject entitled "A Better Theory of Epistemology, Knowledge, Belief and Truth".  He has developed and charted a system which assigns a way to describe the 6 levels of truth: absolutely; certainly; probably; improbably; possibly; and impossibly true or false.  He stated that "knowledge precedes belief" and comes from a variety of sources:  absolute knowledge (e.g. mathematical) and also second hand sources ( e.g. personal experience, testimonials, audio recordings, etc.).    Second hand sources are generally unreliable and most, if not all, religious beliefs fall into this category.  Ethics and morals are beliefs.

 He touched on pragmatism, mathematical truth, definitional truth, propositional knowledge and other related concepts.

Rich recommended watching other YouTube videos on this topic by Bart Ehrman and Matt Dellahunty.

A wide-ranging discussion by the members present followed.

During the second part of the meeting,  Lloyd Kumley talked about how some of the special days in the month of September are celebrated, describing each occasion. His review included: Mexico Independence Day; the Autumnal Equinox, International World Peace Day and Talk Like a Pirate Day.  Just for fun,  Lloyd & Dab offered a short sampling of the latter.

The topic for the October meeting has not yet been determined, but will probably be held in person in the Lakeside area.

Lloyd concluded the meeting at approximately 5:45pm.

Respectfully submitted,

Dab Steadman, Secretary

[Vijay Nilekani]

Hi Lloyd, DAB, and Chad,

Can one of you please forward me and Brad Felix the Zoom recording and instructions to watch it at your convenience? We were tied up at the Bravo Theatre and couldn't participate because of the schedule conflict.

Thank you,

Vijay Nilekani 

Yahoo Mail: Search, Organize, Conquer

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