Atheists; what do you base your morals on?

[jstrodel]

But that doesn't serve the needs of a secular society.

This is where our beliefs systems diverge, you are interested in making people actions conform to serve the ends of "secular society" while I have a different goal. It is true that many of the consequences you have mentioned could possibly happen through having more separate communities. I would consider that as a serious problem with denominationalism and having different religious factions. Historically it has led to war.

But your argument fails to take into account that liberal multiculturalism itself is a separate faction, and a faction that exerts a heavy weight upon society. Does liberal multiculturalism actually have the philosophical authority to act as a chief cultural agent of authority? Have you ever read Alaisdair MacIntyre's critique of the moral language of modernity? It is certainly related to the economics of education and the sort of arguments you are making.

I would argue further that liberal multiculturalism has the same problems that are associated with religious factions: divisions, potential for violence, potential within the multicultural groupings for other sorts of tribalism (consider gang activity in big city schools). The difference is that in the context of multicultural organization, little philosophical resources can be drawn from in order to teach authoritatively when it comes to what it means to live the good life. Political beliefs have no value. No one cares about the law. No one feels obligated to follow it.

Rules are rooted in the pragmatic ethics that makes them seem hollow. There is little reason to follow them, except to pursue selfish ends.

Multicultural approaches to uniting disparate ideologies and philosophies that seemed at the outset to not want to impinge on the integrity of the ideologies or religious beliefs seems in practice with the educational and vocational devaluing of religious or philosophical beliefs to undermine them and weaken and trivialize their obvious demand for the whole person, no only what is left over after liberalism.

In the end a sort of tribalism emerges, a tribalism against tribalism, what we have is the most confused psuedo-philosophy of post-modernism ever created. The wealthiest country in history must use all of its educational resources to try and clarify and understand not the nature of human life but how to get different people to abandon their differences and worship the state.

A hardly inspiring vision.