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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: }3 Y. W; x' o$ P% z
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& L \; O! W" bhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12811197
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. ]5 }. `! {' o4 P0 V6 i% H22 March 2011 Last updated at 03:31 ET Share this pageFacebookTwitter ShareEmail Print Religion may become extinct in nine nations, study saysBy Jason Palmer6 {0 y" b' N' p2 E4 W# Y6 @3 q
$ ^! F4 @+ h; \0 C2 ~9 o7 UScience 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.' J5 c* K& b! J! w2 v
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The study found a steady rise in those claiming no religious affiliation.& H5 x6 f# p+ j8 B* R
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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.5 ^% o- H. {9 H: c9 } {% V3 o1 N
, ~2 W7 s& ?6 s/ F% z6 \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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1 Z2 v9 P/ n- ^ d. ^" S# E8 sThe 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.3 V4 L1 D* y8 B% G! G" h2 b
3 U3 n& P; f0 F* h' nTheir 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.) L5 `/ ` D0 @. U+ W8 c
6 j/ A1 i, c' S: @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.( R: L* a) p+ h p$ C0 g0 D0 ~
( V% g Q/ f, k/ d\"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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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%.\"6 x \' _1 A: {$ c0 F$ @, ]
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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.9 E7 ]& D. {6 v$ P5 C) E/ _! q, g
! e8 J. ~# v8 J5 v5 X8 ]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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And in all the countries, the indications were that religion was headed toward extinction.( V" ]+ m. D B9 @9 S: w( z# S C
6 {& M( X& ^% dHowever, 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.7 _+ j0 o! |9 ?
2 S; q- n+ Z: Y$ V! B" S5 u% W; h\"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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However, he told BBC News that he thought it was \"a suggestive result\". 7 ^! r8 L9 ?0 s% O
' J" ^( U* t7 v; U\"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.; c0 |& @& k1 X5 X% Y G, a1 A, ~
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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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