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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
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12811197
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22 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, Dallas% d! a3 H( X$ l' Q
- H% U8 M: J6 q- bA study using census data from nine countries shows that religion there is set for extinction, say researchers.% ^! u& ]2 T+ {) O
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The study found a steady rise in those claiming no religious affiliation.# i2 v, }6 V. Z7 M- |! `+ `% u
9 G" N! T( J0 x) T5 N% A2 ZThe team\'s mathematical model attempts to account for the interplay between the number of religious respondents and the social motives behind being one.. m( i5 _3 d7 K
) s8 b) }1 \ ~' E$ vThe 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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Their 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.
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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.
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At its heart is the competition between speakers of different languages, and the \"utility\" of speaking one instead of another." w# Y6 f% g9 y2 C+ B5 g/ i. W
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\"The idea is pretty simple,\" said Richard Wiener of the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, and the University of Arizona.
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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.! |1 X. `1 j$ r, B4 z+ k( J
: t. o- f2 }: s+ ~5 Y9 b" |7 i\"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%.\"
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x" j, N* s7 z3 ^+ MThe 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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C$ {3 T+ {, {. l: p/ p* mThey 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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# z& _( A& ?' |: E hAnd 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.
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However, he told BBC News that he thought it was \"a suggestive result\".
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\"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.8 M) p- O: z+ i+ L% b' E
1 }" H' Q# }6 ?& n* b\"Obviously much more complicated things are going on with any one individual, but maybe a lot of that averages out.\" |
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