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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& l* y) _0 ~: K* b- n
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# q1 Q7 p5 r4 z" Jhttp://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, `" d. [) W: u8 i6 u8 G; \" J
2 C. g* W8 X& g9 `; aScience and technology reporter, BBC News, Dallas* k# ?+ f- u$ O- W* y4 V6 ~$ h8 P
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A study using census data from nine countries shows that religion there is set for extinction, say researchers.
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The study found a steady rise in those claiming no religious affiliation." H+ C* B: }; m @9 z4 A
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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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1 U; j. o. d5 _3 U6 S* H$ @The result, reported at the American Physical Society meeting in Dallas, US, indicates that religion will all but die out altogether in those countries./ `: a1 M3 |$ T
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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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" H4 d* F5 v8 I3 BTheir 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. W1 A! H) }0 B, ^ b U
( \$ _( X# p; k9 l V* `At its heart is the competition between speakers of different languages, and the \"utility\" of speaking one instead of another.
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' M! s, u9 _5 l% C" W\"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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; W4 g5 p/ ?3 d- H. K* p) `\"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 R" ?' ]; g" L
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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.
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- t/ E' X" Y7 n* bThey 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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- S/ S# R: U q ]8 x+ uAnd 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.% i! d& c( Y6 S7 D; S! {- T0 z
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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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9 m0 Y+ O9 Q* H( _/ D- t$ S* Z5 zHowever, he told BBC News that he thought it was \"a suggestive result\". 8 z% B- `% P$ q
1 c; d" ^) z( z, C) j: h0 ^' C+ P\"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.# w( J. Q) d N% Y( s
3 e5 h7 x9 z. x& }5 ]9 O% _. b7 h\"Obviously much more complicated things are going on with any one individual, but maybe a lot of that averages out.\" |
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