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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 T. i5 s8 S6 S8 Z( U! h- M
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" L8 H: A4 ^( T- E6 ~. Qhttp://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
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A study using census data from nine countries shows that religion there is set for extinction, say researchers.+ v( ?) `( s6 D4 w
1 o! G$ V& D @The study found a steady rise in those claiming no religious affiliation.
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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.0 m* L+ r3 }( T! E: D
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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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; r9 G8 p4 @- l2 S+ E8 {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.$ u9 O$ G. l' j5 z6 O7 u1 G
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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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4 `$ O9 s) c" K5 |' ?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.$ |% t; `+ q; G" h, `. y; S& l3 r: u
5 T" r. z m3 ?' e u8 `\"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.6 Q r3 c4 Z# G$ G+ O
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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.\"& O5 K j' a! u% F+ E
2 N! \$ D6 [6 b' }) w+ IDr 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 I, T6 g# L0 ~
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The team then applied their nonlinear dynamics model, adjusting parameters for the relative social and utilitarian merits of membership of the \"non-religious\" category.1 U9 p" l5 K2 L# L+ o
7 c: j) c+ q& F* R5 l* p" XThey 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.& x9 L, ] {: o! z3 A
6 [/ ~) @8 N) h( y; jAnd in all the countries, the indications were that religion was headed toward extinction.' `/ J" F' b1 \
# S9 g1 L0 ~% s% N; E2 M8 lHowever, 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." ?# d1 w) z4 v; i$ o4 x
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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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8 n3 r$ c2 |4 K! Q, A3 B! _However, he told BBC News that he thought it was \"a suggestive result\". 1 w/ E h* A- d8 C; y/ h5 A0 d
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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.
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7 b+ r! M- B' f7 I\"Obviously much more complicated things are going on with any one individual, but maybe a lot of that averages out.\" |
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