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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-128111978 z; T$ _- F* ]
# H' {4 c* Q0 V22 March 2011 Last updated at 03:31 ET Share this pageFacebookTwitter ShareEmail Print Religion may become extinct in nine nations, study saysBy Jason Palmer' x0 N+ n8 H' s5 f3 ~& U9 A U
I! s ~- x& t/ O) v3 gScience and technology reporter, BBC News, Dallas
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. l! u0 }3 s1 A. Y( K7 N# h; ^A study using census data from nine countries shows that religion there is set for extinction, say researchers.
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! O# y; }# E( ]* I6 ~The study found a steady rise in those claiming no religious affiliation.
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, U, b+ r% p: x$ g, ^# KThe team\'s mathematical model attempts to account for the interplay between the number of religious respondents and the social motives behind being one.5 z. N8 c3 b" J6 ^
+ n4 h2 R5 ~7 hThe result, reported at the American Physical Society meeting in Dallas, US, indicates that religion will all but die out altogether in those countries.- d s" L7 y6 j% v# n
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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./ {( Z ~, U" ^9 N% F
0 p, v4 e- X# o: G9 a+ A: v4 eOne 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., k: K8 a. b6 [- L
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At its heart is the competition between speakers of different languages, and the \"utility\" of speaking one instead of another.: ?( i. ]; l6 b9 E' n
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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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# f" L% @1 M$ I7 k3 Q\"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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\"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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( a" K3 l3 k X% n" D( I* \0 k; {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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1 h o/ k' H6 S( lThe team then applied their nonlinear dynamics model, adjusting parameters for the relative social and utilitarian merits of membership of the \"non-religious\" category.# ?, ?1 l# W0 Z
( `5 b8 S8 W% `0 \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.
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3 q. V1 T/ y. Y8 A, tAnd in all the countries, the indications were that religion was headed toward extinction.9 u" K- N0 P3 O" ]+ p
4 g( F7 N: p, d# A$ wHowever, 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.. y2 ~4 y, q* ^3 K- D) D4 T) D$ G
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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.0 [; f3 P+ u6 x- D. u% h. `
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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.
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. k4 x9 C( }; _: g\"Obviously much more complicated things are going on with any one individual, but maybe a lot of that averages out.\" |
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