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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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3 r3 @. }) x# rhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-128111970 T5 D* G. {0 }; u
4 F7 ? e. s% t' {/ Q22 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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5 n: d k9 _1 P; y, UScience and technology reporter, BBC News, Dallas! {* N( ]# y/ F9 I) _& Y7 n" y
5 M' r" m( U; p( P& {6 e1 HA study using census data from nine countries shows that religion there is set for extinction, say researchers.
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# ^' Y" S! @6 NThe 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.- x, t% H; u4 J/ G: z
4 E- g" s& n- X7 ~The result, reported at the American Physical Society meeting in Dallas, US, indicates that religion will all but die out altogether in those countries.: t/ q) {- I7 I' A+ f
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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.5 F3 H6 K6 S: B: K' G; [
7 k6 W1 G0 P8 T- D6 ?; q+ D. |# GTheir 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.7 Q8 i( ^9 P9 x$ c4 I& P
( ?. _- a0 P) M/ ?- U9 ]9 gOne 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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! L" S Q% V0 S0 IAt its heart is the competition between speakers of different languages, and the \"utility\" of speaking one instead of another. n1 w" t. r( U4 S C/ v
% P& `/ e) w4 {4 H' ?# E! z\"The idea is pretty simple,\" said Richard Wiener of the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, and the University of Arizona.- {2 H# c, d4 M+ R' C, B
0 w) x- Y' C) g, a- ]2 {\"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.- k5 f. b3 d* w/ H" 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.\"
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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%.\"& F7 i3 N- `8 |2 T# ?1 F( Y
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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.' @7 a* o" D1 _
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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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And 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., h$ u/ }5 `' A x# W+ o+ t' z6 y
, |$ @' O( I- S' C: }% s% Q\"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\". ! o: ^2 u' n6 N* L3 o) {
9 c; q z4 i; m* L\"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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@8 R+ {( [' z# V# P\"Obviously much more complicated things are going on with any one individual, but maybe a lot of that averages out.\" |
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