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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* ^$ I2 L! q6 i: S1 d* v
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12811197( o% o1 F$ o$ X* k) s
( h% ?7 `& q% d3 e6 K; z22 March 2011 Last updated at 03:31 ET Share this pageFacebookTwitter ShareEmail Print Religion may become extinct in nine nations, study saysBy Jason Palmer, @: Q3 }2 F# D* z2 F$ K4 A+ O' R
8 d' i/ P" x. V8 J& \0 b/ _Science and technology reporter, BBC News, Dallas
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/ g. A- n6 L% |A study using census data from nine countries shows that religion there is set for extinction, say researchers.
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7 `( _9 x5 ^ ]The study found a steady rise in those claiming no religious affiliation.; G+ M D! n5 ~" L r9 P& I
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The 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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! G" a0 I, u* {3 t& \1 DTheir 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.9 Z9 c# D! p6 R
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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. v% ?* j# ^! g( f% {1 m6 m
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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.
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5 o. X/ q+ B9 e5 ]% _( U" ]- F\"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.\"" r. K$ u7 Q) k7 u4 a
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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%.\"+ S) w% _$ s( S
0 O0 V% Z* i, h& EThe team then applied their nonlinear dynamics model, adjusting parameters for the relative social and utilitarian merits of membership of the \"non-religious\" category. J6 z, v9 q! u! i3 ?' ?8 d
5 W7 o' |3 E1 h% b1 A3 g# T; d R$ ~; WThey 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.! E! E& {# j/ Q( i- m2 K3 T
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And 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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( h2 U! G, B6 g% v5 a2 K\"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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. W3 o! z H a: b& I9 B' }However, he told BBC News that he thought it was \"a suggestive result\".
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/ H4 w, j" U& X# I\"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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\"Obviously much more complicated things are going on with any one individual, but maybe a lot of that averages out.\" |
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