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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$ M# |& B, i% a
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9 @$ I- x0 p" W- g7 D+ ?# Hhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12811197. N+ F, J" r2 ^ V( n+ `3 z
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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& ?+ |7 Q- Y7 ]) G6 z, [' U
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Science and technology reporter, BBC News, Dallas% W; v Y$ N' s2 d5 ~5 a n/ y
; e7 P% `$ W% Z' u' l7 FA study using census data from nine countries shows that religion there is set for extinction, say researchers.0 i, F+ N2 m V& U
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The study found a steady rise in those claiming no religious affiliation.
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1 b3 T2 Q7 J d6 O+ jThe 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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& {+ J' Y6 R; |The result, reported at the American Physical Society meeting in Dallas, US, indicates that religion will all but die out altogether in those countries.2 \5 q4 }7 R6 Q. L* d8 H* F: I
& t' L9 {6 ~0 Y& |. j9 N; T! GThe 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.7 A% ~) g5 b6 ~! U3 n
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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.& i/ [5 q7 f9 b! e+ D
5 A2 N% v& _/ ~* J6 n {- AOne 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.4 u& {' B. S, ?) b, L
/ R) `4 J c' X! Z: e' sAt its heart is the competition between speakers of different languages, and the \"utility\" of speaking one instead of another.) l3 o4 c# R, h
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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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\"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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2 K8 h' ?+ x3 x8 P& Q\"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.\"7 A7 {+ b5 \ s* F) A
2 \' `7 I7 z0 X/ o0 JDr 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%.\"! q* k% ~5 r- w( R4 c
. s( C* T! S2 ^5 \% wThe 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.
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) g) j( ?$ t2 l3 p gAnd in all the countries, the indications were that religion was headed toward extinction.1 B5 m' D! z: m& @
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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. q" i( `$ V. v% Q8 P6 ~
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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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2 X) I; t4 O! L5 |: f/ M6 lHowever, 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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\"Obviously much more complicated things are going on with any one individual, but maybe a lot of that averages out.\" |
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