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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
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& H4 ?& V% L1 r+ LScience and technology reporter, BBC News, Dallas
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, G5 D2 P& X2 O3 {0 v( }+ f% D6 qA study using census data from nine countries shows that religion there is set for extinction, say researchers.
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% N7 K) ~+ i! d: n3 H* ?The 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.
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. Q+ e2 ]; v; W) A1 s9 QThe 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.
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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. P* N# i. e8 w7 ^1 X
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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.' Q* q; P! L& c+ Q
7 V7 I; n3 U; \At its heart is the competition between speakers of different languages, and the \"utility\" of speaking one instead of another.1 K+ a$ \& [$ K2 [
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\"The idea is pretty simple,\" said Richard Wiener of the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, and the University of Arizona.5 _0 b" ^% |" P- X7 _
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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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! w. L; `# @- q( h3 z4 f\"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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0 [' n8 A- r2 `; aDr 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%.\"9 S4 t6 P. f0 t! L7 }2 t0 u
% L0 p% R. o, \+ `0 D, H, J! ]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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) V a6 a1 m( t- `+ b7 OThey 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./ I/ ?7 ~9 [4 h/ Q
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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.. _" C3 f6 x8 Q- R
% F1 _. k4 ~) J! X% }\"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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\"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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