The book deals with the hypothesis that Christian belief, properly lived, has positive consequences.
The author has analyzed and evaluated (with a new system of criteria and quality measures for controls, panels or the operationalization of items) over 3000 scientific/academic articles and books concerning this subject (you can find, read or download them on my homepage – horstfix.de).
Findings are: Christian belief/behavior correlates positively in 80 % of evaluations with positive emotions (happiness, life satisfaction etc), in 66 % with health, 82 % with fertility, 81 % with prosocial attitudes and/or behavior. It correlates negatively in 64 % of evaluations with negative emotions, in 80 % with mortality and in 74 % with criminal attitudes and/or behavior.
But that’s not all about this book (some of the research until now has found similar results, but probably neither in quantity nor in quality), there is much more than this, much more than previous research: the author tries to establish causality from mere correlation (and probably succeeds in making it relatively certain) and attempts to explain why the link between belief and positivity is real, significant, but relatively weak (reasons analyzed for this are false interpretations of belief, lost balance of belief items, „contamination“ by items not investigated or measured, and heritability). The result of this is (somewhat weaker in its certainty than the correlations): belief/behavior has positive consequences, not (equally strong) in every form, but especially when it comes as close as possible to its properly operationalized and lived form which would overcome the weakness of mankind influencing believers and nonbelievers alike.
This ideal type of belief however can never be fully lived by believers because of human weakness, as Christianity says; living it can only be tried again and again –the more successful, the more with positive consequences (which turn out to be relatively weak on average).
The last chapter – also new in its content and conception – gives attention to the fundamental critics of religion and its positivity. It takes their criticism ( among others topics like social desirability, curvilinearity, difference atheism -unsure belief, ingroup favoritism, religious stereotypes, aggregate connections, „new atheism“ -better than the old ?, changing the definition of „positive“, creating new kinds of positivity) seriously, notwithstanding their often inadequate methods, insufficient argumentation and false assertions, but concludes (also with some weaker empirical certainty, but disclosing in each instance the respective degree of it) that the hypothesis for the time being is confirmed relatively well.