Religious Reasons in Secular Moral Clothing?

In most public debates, including that on bioethics, religious reasoning is considered to be normatively problematic or even a conversation stopper as it leaves the domain of commonly shared values. Nevertheless, a considerable number of people actually have religious reasons for their opinions on bioethical topics. In his Fellow Lecture at the Centre for Advanced Study in Bioethics sociologist Professor John H. Evans (University of California, San Diego) outlined how religious persons present their arguments in public bioethical debates. He showed that there are different techniques of porting religious reasons into secular ones. Furthermore it seems to make a difference if people are professionally involved in bioethics or not.

While bioethics in the US has once been marked by theologians and practising scientists, today it is dominated by Principlism – an alleged secular midrange concept which has been developed since the 1970s by Tom Beauchamp and James Childress. The concept widely corresponds to the normative theory of John Rawls, who attempted to create a space of shared public reasons that all citizens could reasonably accept. However, this approach has been criticized as neglecting legitimate claims of religious persons and is believed by some to lead to alienation from political participation.

How do these normative concepts relate to the actual situation? In an ongoing research project Evans focuses on how religious reasons are represented in contemporary bioethics. Do religious people (want to) use religious reasons in the public sphere? Is religious reasoning bothering non-religious people or do they want their collocutors to present sincere reasons? How are religious reasons related to the secular ones in bioethical debates?

Regarding the latter Evans set up a scheme of five possible relationships. Hence religious reasons could (1) be avoided or (2) simply be used, so that no relationship as such would be established. Furthermore, religious people could make use of (3) a “condensing translation” from religious to secular reasons, (4) a “satisficing selection” of secular reasons, or (5) a “strategic selection” of secular reasons that are most likely to support their own religiously grounded positions. Evans remarked that the complete avoidance of religious reasons would conceptually represent Principlism, but he doubts that religious people would be capable of doing so at all. According to his observations, the fourth strategy is how Principlism normally works for religious discussants.

As a first result, Evans’ in-depth interviews showed that most religious people want to use religious reasons when discussing with secular persons or those of a different religion. Interestingly, even secular respondents did not want religious people to give secular reasons, although they added that they were not going to be convinced by the religious reasons. It is probably therefore that religious people who are professionally concerned with bioethics primarily go for the selection strategies (4/5). Contrary to some apprehensions these strategies are not chosen due to feeling of discursive discrimination, but in order to be most effective. Regarding that, empirical studies showed a remarkable maximization strategy, as some religious Right activists seemed to have used reasons which they actually do not believe in.

In discussion with the Centre members several further questions were raised: Are there people with only religious reasons? What is the exact distinction between secular and religious reasons? What kind of reason is this all about: descriptive or expressive speech acts? Should there be such a thing as empirical bioethics? If so, what consequences would this entail for normative theory?