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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-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: ]9 i/ r" n" R2 n& t* j
% ]& E; N1 J( w% E" U8 O2 X7 Q9 A: eScience and technology reporter, BBC News, Dallas& I. E; f9 O/ d2 c/ 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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The study found a steady rise in those claiming no religious affiliation.1 s" L/ \+ Q1 i; L
! H4 F- K3 d6 O, D2 MThe 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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+ a; X1 u8 y9 Y; D# M0 GThe 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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) q6 L |3 A' g" ]/ W- h: ^ tThe 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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! ?/ u% O$ O; L) [8 J X- mOne 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./ j X# C; j7 C; h; x
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At its heart is the competition between speakers of different languages, and the \"utility\" of speaking one instead of another., c! \! r2 M% ~7 r$ I& b; y6 C$ f8 W
: G2 k- k6 b' ^\"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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\"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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3 @! ^; I3 g2 q3 XDr 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.
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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.) w; g7 J; S) A3 y
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And in all the countries, the indications were that religion was headed toward extinction.% e/ U5 T& Q: p" |" c6 n. [" A
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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.! E! R" _$ ]9 W/ o
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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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However, he told BBC News that he thought it was \"a suggestive result\".
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5 J! a7 j, H b& 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.
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( ?0 M; t( ^3 ?& u\"Obviously much more complicated things are going on with any one individual, but maybe a lot of that averages out.\" |
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