What You Don't Know About Religion (but Should)

This monograph presents a comprehensive sociological examination of religious belief and behavior, challenging widespread assumptions about religion's social impacts and demographic patterns. Cragun employs extensive survey data and statistical analysis to demonstrate that many common beliefs about religion—particularly those promoted by religious institutions and uncritically accepted in public discourse—are empirically unfounded or significantly overstated.

The work systematically addresses multiple dimensions of religious phenomena, including the relationship between religiosity and morality, the actual charitable giving patterns of religious versus secular individuals, and the demographic trends affecting religious identification globally. Cragun's analysis reveals that nonreligious individuals often match or exceed the prosocial behaviors of their religious counterparts when relevant variables are properly controlled. He demonstrates that claims about religion's unique contribution to charitable giving frequently conflate attendance at religious services with broader altruistic behavior, obscuring the substantial civic engagement of secular populations.

Central to Cragun's argument is the methodological critique of how religious statistics are gathered and reported. He exposes how survey designs often incorporate pro-religious biases, leading to inflated estimates of religious belief and practice. The author particularly scrutinizes the common conflation of nominal religious identification with active belief and participation, showing how this confusion distorts public understanding of secularization trends.

The monograph engages critically with the "religious economy" model promoted by scholars like Rodney Stark and Roger Finke, demonstrating through cross-national comparisons that religious pluralism does not necessarily increase overall religiosity as the model predicts. Cragun's empirical findings support modified secularization theory, showing declining religious authority and influence in developed nations despite persistent spiritual interests.

Regarding the God debate specifically, Cragun's work provides crucial empirical grounding for discussions about religion's social utility and truth claims. By demonstrating that nontheistic worldviews can sustain moral behavior and social cohesion as effectively as religious ones, he undermines pragmatic arguments for theism that rest on religion's supposed social necessity. His documentation of rising nonreligion and the viability of secular societies challenges assumptions about innate human religiosity that often support philosophical arguments for God's existence.

The monograph's significance lies in its rigorous empirical approach to questions often addressed through philosophical speculation or theological assertion, providing essential data for evidence-based discussions about religion's role in human life and society.