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Philip Joseph Zuckerman is a sociology and professor of sociology and secular studies at Pitzer College in Claremont, California. He specializes in the sociology of substantial secularity and is the author of eight books, including Beyond Doubt: The Secularization of Society (2023) What It Means to Be Moral: Why Religion Is Not Necessary for Living an Ethical Life (2019).
Zuckerman is research editor and a contributing writer at OnlySky, an online platform "dedicated to protecting America’s secular democracy through reality-based journalism, storytelling, and commentary."
His research interests are secularity, atheism, apostasy, and Scandinavian culture.
Phil Zuckerman's 2008 book Society without God notes that Denmark and Sweden, "probably the least religious countries in the world, and possibly in the history of the world", enjoy "among the lowest violent crime rates in the world and the lowest levels of corruption in the world". Zuckerman's work is based on his studies conducted during a 14-month period in Scandinavia in 2005–2006. Zuckerman identifies that Scandinavians have "relatively high rates of petty crime and burglary", but "their overall rates of violent crime—such as murder, aggravated assault, and rape—are among the lowest on earth".(Zuckerman 2008, pp. 5–6) In 2009, New York Times columnist Peter Steinfels commented that Society Without God provides evidence that an irreligious society can flourish. Society Without God won the silver prize in Foreword magazine's religion book of 2008, and was featured in The New York Times.
Zuckerman's Living the Secular Life: New Answers to Old Questions was released in 2014 and reviewed in The New York Times by Susan Jacoby. Living the Secular Life was designated a "Best Book of 2014" by Publishers Weekly and was featured in a commentary by New York Times columnist David Brooks.
The American Humanist Association has featured Zuckerman as a speaker on rising irreligion in the United States.
Zuckerman has found that murder rates in Scandinavian countries lowered after abolishing the death penalty, and has opposed the use in the United States.
Zuckerman has found that the religiously unaffiliated tend to be more inclined to progressive politics, and the decline in Protestant Christianity in America is a blow to conservative causes. Zuckerman has commented on the rise of "Jews of no religion", people who identify as being wholly or partially Jewish while having no religion. Zuckerman commented that growing atheist movements in the United States were a response to the impact of the Christian right.
In 2023 he was invited to participate in an Oxford Union debate. He addressed the proposition "This House Believes that God is a Delusion." He suggests that there is no satisfactory single definition of God and asks why any God would oversee a world in which more secular countries enjoy a better standard of living than devout countries.
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