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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 @( Y; x ^; w" a7 M [8 Q
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4 B4 G3 P: X ?- t8 @) Ghttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12811197
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& T$ N) S) {7 h22 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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0 j) ^! b8 C/ ]) h F+ AScience and technology reporter, BBC News, Dallas, {" ]" ]( r+ J* r! A: U
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A study using census data from nine countries shows that religion there is set for extinction, say researchers.' h5 P& q3 r r$ ?% ]
$ G' S4 S; F8 k1 n* O( MThe study found a steady rise in those claiming no religious affiliation.- W+ c$ l! p9 P& f9 t" |5 E
d+ n: n9 k4 e9 }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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, ]5 ^1 O; ?4 D P+ C9 hThe 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." Y6 V7 Y+ r( K1 X
! G7 q. s, Q% c" I& |' ]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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" u! ?9 W, _ Q" b# m" |! H8 R. p( \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." D5 L9 j0 O2 ^% ]# E" @! Z! A
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At its heart is the competition between speakers of different languages, and the \"utility\" of speaking one instead of another.
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\"The idea is pretty simple,\" said Richard Wiener of the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, and the University of Arizona.& f ^* i! B7 x$ k) U
7 u" r3 `9 N5 R- k, C1 Y( P\"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.- j% _) c9 w$ u& |" {8 A3 v
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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.\": T: N( p8 s4 E- g4 m2 w% [
. y% z3 ]$ J7 g" Z) dDr 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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* N/ s- F; |9 a# lThe 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.4 e( \" R0 a0 a% G; [1 ?# i2 ^
! l5 z" g1 V1 k1 c% t9 bAnd 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.% o& L' _$ ^8 G* h; _
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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.9 B' Z- B; i9 U7 |) k# M0 ? n1 ?
: e9 _& M ~& \( `3 b7 i+ {However, he told BBC News that he thought it was \"a suggestive result\". 0 _/ @ o2 b* u, R
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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.$ t2 T! i3 T7 ?- v
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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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