"Is religion necessary to live a moral life?"

So, I decided to go to my first ever Philosophy Club meeting and I was enthralled by how awesome it was. I used to discuss some philosophical things with friends when I was younger, but then as I grew up, I figured, 'what's the point?'

I found out about the meeting through Wendy, the president, who I actually came by the FIU Chabad table as I was tabling. She told me about the Miami Jewish Film Festival and I told her that I was already going. I took my ex-girlfriend, Elizzabeth, to this movie called Shiva - The Seven Days. She liked the movie. I saw Wendy out there and chatted with her, and saw 2 more times. One of those times was at the FIU CSO meeting which is a meeting of all the organizations. Apparently she was representing the FIU Philosophy Club. I knew I had to attend at least one meeting to see what it was about.

I signed up to get updated about events at the Google Groups website for the FIU Philosophy Club, and today I signed up for the Facebook group.

-----------------------------

I went to the lecture titled, "Is religion necessary to live a moral life?" and it was really good. Basically, it was an open lecture with one of the professors, professor Torres, as a background moderator to keep the discussion on topic. It was a highly intellectually stimulating discussion for me. I was heavily participating in the discussion. I took some notes from it too. The following are from the notes that I took.

2 philosophers in "Taking Sides"

Does morality need religion?

People believe that morality and religion are codependent.

If there's no god, everything is possible

Problem 1 - Moral Atheists don't need religion

Problem 2 - Different moralities

Eye for an eye - turn another cheek

Problem? Religious morality is better than secular morality

Euthephro - religion - piety

Something moral is selfless?

Hammurabi's code - The strong protects the weak

Kant - deontological understanding of morality

empirical vs normative - empirical: act, authority, religion, morality

moral codes - one code that's right - cultural relativism

esoteric - knowledge rationalize

vocabulary lesson - look them up: machination, relegate, (coannalism???,) imperialism