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澳洲, 奧地利, 加拿大, 捷克, 芬蘭, 愛爾蘭, 荷蘭, 新西蘭, 瑞士9 I' m" X0 Q4 _$ W9 g6 w8 a8 S# a
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8 ^) W* {& I* ^4 |. Ehttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12811197+ x- [( k4 H9 r0 `' z1 C
! F! G1 I. |5 a5 C) W, |/ _4 j4 c22 March 2011 Last updated at 03:31 ET Share this pageFacebookTwitter ShareEmail Print Religion may become extinct in nine nations, study saysBy Jason Palmer
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Science and technology reporter, BBC News, Dallas8 b) z+ p2 s* i0 U0 ?# S/ W( h( V: }6 u
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A study using census data from nine countries shows that religion there is set for extinction, say researchers.1 h+ S6 o& \, Q8 q0 ]4 }4 o2 ]2 f
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The study found a steady rise in those claiming no religious affiliation.! y( i# K& t4 v/ N$ C$ G/ j
# c: O6 ?4 n7 }0 r. tThe team\'s mathematical model attempts to account for the interplay between the number of religious respondents and the social motives behind being one.
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The result, reported at the American Physical Society meeting in Dallas, US, indicates that religion will all but die out altogether in those countries.
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The team took census data stretching back as far as a century from countries in which the census queried religious affiliation: Australia, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Switzerland.
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3 d8 R% ~) f+ U0 o* pTheir means of analysing the data invokes what is known as nonlinear dynamics - a mathematical approach that has been used to explain a wide range of physical phenomena in which a number of factors play a part.6 P k! Z# v" [5 p' C0 H/ A
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One of the team, Daniel Abrams of Northwestern University, put forth a similar model in 2003 to put a numerical basis behind the decline of lesser-spoken world languages.* h6 K% |6 E/ k9 _4 s+ ?
# u: y% @5 S/ O4 X3 }) JAt its heart is the competition between speakers of different languages, and the \"utility\" of speaking one instead of another.& J y1 E0 ^0 }: [3 Z+ ]! B
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\"The idea is pretty simple,\" said Richard Wiener of the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, and the University of Arizona.( B; M: r; h; P2 [+ P$ W
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\"It posits that social groups that have more members are going to be more attractive to join, and it posits that social groups have a social status or utility.
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\"For example in languages, there can be greater utility or status in speaking Spanish instead of [the dying language] Quechuan in Peru, and similarly there\'s some kind of status or utility in being a member of a religion or not.\"
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Dr Wiener continued: \"In a large number of modern secular democracies, there\'s been a trend that folk are identifying themselves as non-affiliated with religion; in the Netherlands the number was 40%, and the highest we saw was in the Czech Republic, where the number was 60%.\"2 H3 T" Z3 C" u' K9 _5 i
- g+ h, q+ q @) s9 B JThe team then applied their nonlinear dynamics model, adjusting parameters for the relative social and utilitarian merits of membership of the \"non-religious\" category.
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They found, in a study published online, that those parameters were similar across all the countries studied, suggesting that similar behaviour drives the mathematics in all of them.
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/ y# a: t' K7 ]: |9 J4 Y- s2 XAnd in all the countries, the indications were that religion was headed toward extinction.
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However, Dr Wiener told the conference that the team was working to update the model with a \"network structure\" more representative of the one at work in the world.
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\"Obviously we don\'t really believe this is the network structure of a modern society, where each person is influenced equally by all the other people in society,\" he said.: v0 L7 W# G4 T$ D4 J. j
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However, he told BBC News that he thought it was \"a suggestive result\".
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3 V# A$ C* a. N; e9 |+ ?\"It\'s interesting that a fairly simple model captures the data, and if those simple ideas are correct, it suggests where this might be going.
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2 F8 ~6 M% `4 T# Q# U5 s\"Obviously much more complicated things are going on with any one individual, but maybe a lot of that averages out.\" |
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