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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1 |' J k1 v2 I7 D
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1 {3 Y8 h8 f" _4 W2 {9 ~% x$ ~" ghttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12811197. ~) p& Q, b$ J y- W
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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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: I" I4 g$ g" @( D# h A$ bScience and technology reporter, BBC News, Dallas0 @; W+ J5 q4 [6 N# H
! A! b, z( s: }4 r: H; _! UA study using census data from nine countries shows that religion there is set for extinction, say researchers.
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5 S( P7 P( |0 Z7 L3 e# o FThe study found a steady rise in those claiming no religious affiliation.& W+ [! h( {% ^ f, o- e
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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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?) a5 c2 G+ n# q. o- u% [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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2 ~3 h* g* @7 ~2 z/ c3 M3 yThe 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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~6 b. D1 y3 P5 \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., J. ]& j. [4 \/ t* B2 Z# 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.
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% S; ^9 k* }! S2 `2 y5 N. ^\"The idea is pretty simple,\" said Richard Wiener of the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, and the University of Arizona.
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: H5 m% x7 F. V6 ?* G0 a6 C# R4 U\"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.+ h O' U. H7 X1 r, P
9 s( A/ {' L# \8 R9 k3 y5 \ D\"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.\"4 B0 W o& v2 ^9 f. L! p8 i; @
4 V. ]6 O; ]6 Z: EDr 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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4 q' e* e' ~0 y$ {4 w; I: |The team then applied their nonlinear dynamics model, adjusting parameters for the relative social and utilitarian merits of membership of the \"non-religious\" category.9 u. M4 p" U" s/ c# H/ q; V& U
' N3 h" w1 U9 VThey 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.% c. J8 s8 @7 ^( w9 @& {" Y7 W
) A+ f7 Q5 Z% Z) l2 {2 b' pAnd in all the countries, the indications were that religion was headed toward extinction.5 e8 F" @6 V: p! g
9 @' T( |: ^1 P8 |; y* _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.
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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.1 i* ~1 N5 a: ]5 B
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However, he told BBC News that he thought it was \"a suggestive result\". 9 D4 |5 t6 W; {; D% m! n
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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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