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* O; G% Z+ s& x8 |0 o& ohttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12811197* w$ A$ @$ F1 o
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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 v7 a% t" q" R! r9 r% Q- f2 K
5 W3 i1 v& W5 F3 jScience and technology reporter, BBC News, Dallas
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% h$ U2 v; H* v' wA 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.
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8 H8 s9 s/ P% X' f* H9 Z5 QThe team\'s mathematical model attempts to account for the interplay between the number of religious respondents and the social motives behind being one.# d4 y) i' t. c! E$ c
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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.
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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.* G1 F- O/ [" o
# N4 |7 ^5 v9 V, s- hTheir 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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3 K# O( [2 _' N2 B$ ?8 b4 COne 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.
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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.) M* M* i, f% y) _, q9 P
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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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# o4 m9 L( o# E( M+ }- ]/ U5 @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%.\"5 I5 K2 C, ?' m4 h
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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.1 z5 D i# @# z+ ~9 v! l3 F9 `
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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.3 v7 @0 i; W- m$ a
M$ i: X' v7 V: h" L" zHowever, 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.
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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\". ; N+ K" z$ \* e$ {% @
+ F. g6 X+ N7 i$ |+ x! T\"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.) s8 p8 `- |: h8 @( b9 c2 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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