IF ANYTHING can turn a skeptical writer into a believer, it has to be the monster survey of faith-based ideas conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. The survey is a trove of fascinating data, exactly what a writer needs in July, when thoughts shrivel on the pavement before they are even thoughts.

Pew is one of those exemplary research organizations that go at certain questions just because they are interesting. Last year, its Forum on Religion and Public Life conducted telephone interviews with more than 35,000 Americans in a project to identify our beliefs, and explore how those beliefs connect with civic life.

One big gander at the data came out in February. It focused on the surprising fluidity of Americans’ beliefs. For a few decades now, Americans have been busy switching their affiliations, with large numbers leaving the religions or denominations in which they were raised. Now, a second report uncovers another big surprise: tolerance.

It seems that not many Americans believe they have a monopoly on the truth. In fact, they believe all sorts of things, including things that contradict each other. We Americans are cheerfully inconsistent, and not, apparently, bothered by it.

About three-quarters of Americans believe that faiths other than their own can lead to eternal life. Adherents to the less well-represented faiths (Jews, Hindus and Buddhists) are by far the most tolerant on this question. But almost 80 percent of American Catholics said theirs was not the only route to salvation, a finding that might concern the Vatican.

Still more interesting, scads of evangelical Protestants apparently missed the memo. Doctrinally, Southern Baptists, for instance, insist that accepting Jesus Christ as savior is the necessary ticket to heaven. Yet 57 percent of evangelicals say they can feature getting there another way. (This is if there is a heaven of course — a big if for roughly a quarter of the respondents, who nevertheless felt free to speculate on who would be allowed in.)

With so many feeling so relaxed about ultimate questions, it is not surprising that hell is going out of fashion. Of those surveyed, 74 percent thought heaven exists, but only 59 percent could bring themselves to believe in hell. (For the others, especially those in the greater Providence area, I can only ask: Have you been outside lately?)

Some scholars chalk it up to Americans’ innate optimism. They also suggest that living in a multicultural society makes it harder to consign the guy next door to damnation.

Maybe. But ideas of heaven and hell are closely tied to notions of justice. If you feel oppressed in this life, your only hope may lie in the beyond. What does it say that African-American Protestants and Muslims are among the biggest believers in hell?

For that matter, why is a belief in hell relatively uncommon in Vermont (around 37 percent) but vigorous in Mississippi (82 percent)? (See weather, July?)

The survey has made some religious leaders wince. They grumble that Americans should know more about the dogmas they have signed on to. Otherwise folks are sitting in pews, making it up as they go along. The whole country is in a thick mental fog, easily mistaken for secularism.

But foggy thinking can be another name for open-mindedness. “It’s not that Americans don’t believe in anything,” said Michael Lindsay, of Rice University’s Center on Race, Religion and Urban Life. “It’s that we believe in everything.”

Between that and being sure you have all the answers, I’ll take foggy thinking any day.

The elusive “war on terror” is partly a struggle against certainty, including explicit ideas of heaven and hell. The rise of the religious right over the last few decades suggested that Americans were feeling more certain rather than less, so it is heartening to see as much intellectual humility as the Pew survey seemingly found.

The wonder of surveys, though, is ultimately their limits.

Do you believe in heaven? How can that possibly be a yes-or-no question?

Surveys never fully reveal the complexities and confusions of an individual mind. In the very way they formulate questions, they determine reality.

The Pew survey does not, for example, ask: Do you ever find yourself gazing into the abyss?

Or: Is it possible you are just a bundle of perceptions? What color is the number five?

And so on.

These are questions for the porch, for the beach, for all the restless nights in the sticky season of July.

M.J. Andersen is a member of The Journal’s editorial board.