Incredibly interesting, and a good balance of quantitative and qualitative data. My only complaint is that "Religion" is narrowly defined and analyzed as "Christian." More diversity in non-Christian or non-monotheistic religions would have made it better.

read for rels 3000: ghosts, demons, fear, and conspiracy in american culture. bader et al. claimed not to be interested in truth claims, but especially when it came to people who believed in ufos &/ that they themselves had been abducted by aliens at one or more points in their lives, it seemed clear to me that they thought the people they were interacting with were crazy. there's also this godawful quote from chapter one:

In addition to including thorough sets of questions on the paranormal, we asked extensive questions about perceptions of supernatural religious evil. Who believes Satan and demons are active forces on Earth? Who believes that humans can be possessed by the devil? Who fears an upcoming Armageddon? Sometimes such beliefs about evil coalesce into widespread panics, as occurred in the 1980s when the FBI began to receive reports from therapists across the country that their patients had "recovered" memories of hideous abuse perpetrated by secretive, underground Satanic cults. The victims claimed to have witnessed animal and human sacrifices. (20)

like, for three guys who claim to be disinterested in truth claims, you sure do love to discredit csa survivors. not a great book, especially not if you're interested in an academically-oriented look at those who believe in the paranormal.

V informal tone, but good data and discussion of who believes what. A refreshing change from the usual paranormal trash I read.

Refreshing to read a scientific review of what we believe and why.

Lots of problems with this book which was dealing with some interesting data. First, categories: lumping various religious groups under headings like "Roman Catholic" or "Black Protestants" and then making claims about those groups is problematic when those groups often have varying practices, beliefs, etc. At one point the authors claim that the Roman Catholicism is going to grow and thus we will see a lessening of paranormal beliefs. Why? Because the Roman Catholics they interviewed didn't have many such beliefs. But they never talk about if these Catholics were white Americans because I bet if you asked Catholics from different countries than you'd likely find very different results. And since RC is going to grow through immigration it might behoove one to survey that group. Second, they never stopped to wonder how neat their categories might be, and when confronted with how people easily lived with say a belief in Bigfoot alongside being regular church goers at a conservative protestant church, they floundered. They did the same when claiming that the Puritans of the Salem Witch Trials lived in isolation from religious beliefs that challenged their own. Nevermind that this is totally false and that they were constantly defending doctrine against "heretics" the fact is that the Puritans themselves often practiced things that looked quite a bit like witchcraft. These mistakes could have been easily avoided with a bit of research. Third, the way they read their already problematic numbers was dull and overly conservative. There was one area that had a really interesting spike and they NEVER even acknowledged it. Sadly all this books does is try to tidy up paranormal beliefs even as it was clear just by reading their own data that things were a lot messier than they'd like to admit.

A very dry look at the people who believe in the paranormal.