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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+ q; `8 {. C+ K# x
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3 a# a }+ l1 q5 Chttp://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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; b/ t6 i5 c/ K( M4 m0 n$ [9 eScience and technology reporter, BBC News, Dallas _) @$ D' u! ?1 m: l6 G( A
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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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) b1 h8 q* G9 ]' {0 e6 Y1 m5 {The study found a steady rise in those claiming no religious affiliation.; g7 c5 q) |, }9 e9 C
( a+ P! Y, U6 j" T5 H0 m" NThe 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.( k9 I& j6 G' i2 _ ~1 `
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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.
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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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At its heart is the competition between speakers of different languages, and the \"utility\" of speaking one instead of another.7 V6 \0 b1 [; z0 ]1 x2 j
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\"The idea is pretty simple,\" said Richard Wiener of the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, and the University of Arizona.7 p+ I& q; I7 @& y( P/ d% ?( s
, W, t7 i' _- h% h\"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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' y; q6 L+ g/ a; a* T4 Z6 v\"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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: ?9 G j* J2 a R+ ?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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The team then applied their nonlinear dynamics model, adjusting parameters for the relative social and utilitarian merits of membership of the \"non-religious\" category.2 r7 X/ W! J1 x6 M0 m: j
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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.
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- w8 O! I F9 `" PAnd in all the countries, the indications were that religion was headed toward extinction. x8 S3 Y5 l4 n( d. C b# c" l
1 ]$ g) q4 X" aHowever, 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.. y" L* H: N8 [* d1 V
! d+ ~2 h9 _6 h$ h0 ?1 E( [\"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.8 j% \- m1 N& T5 t6 ~/ Z2 a
. x/ H; e5 |: t2 y- L: zHowever, he told BBC News that he thought it was \"a suggestive result\". ! `& |0 p$ ~% C9 P2 S; j- W7 ?
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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. }& S' }! H) |. u& \" y
* ]% m" M) S0 a& L\"Obviously much more complicated things are going on with any one individual, but maybe a lot of that averages out.\" |
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