As must be evident from the foregoing chapters, as well as from what we all know about elective-death issues, the influences of generally secular cultural beliefs and values tend to be less significant than those of religious ones in most cases where culturally determined factors affect judgments and decisions. Actually, it is a good question how far we can go in separating out defining secular cultural values, beliefs, and practices from religious ones in most cultures, so religious influences likely are that much more significant. Language and ethnicity, geographic location, and survival methods are fundamental in determining a people's culture, but the ideological objectification and consequent influences of these basic cultural components are invariably shaped by religious beliefs and practices. There are few cultures with purely secular defining principles and traditions.

Whether or not separable from secular ones, religious values and beliefs have a role in elective-death deliberation and the assessment of that deliberation that is enormously important and, in perhaps the majority of cases, decisive. That this is so is of great concern to us; the exercise of sound reasoning in choosing to die, the articulation and acceptance of proper motives in enacting the decision to die, and the assessment of the reasoning and motivation often can be skewed, if not misdirected, by religious beliefs and commitments.

What may be surprising is that unlike what many might assume, religion's role with respect to PS1, SS2, AS3, and RE4 is not universally proscriptive.