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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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* T0 m3 `! Q8 s$ L0 F2 o4 F4 n- rhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12811197
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; ]# f0 U2 h( J' \) u4 T* n22 March 2011 Last updated at 03:31 ET Share this pageFacebookTwitter ShareEmail Print Religion may become extinct in nine nations, study saysBy Jason Palmer, a2 N; U- _5 A9 b2 c5 K0 r3 O3 s3 f
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Science and technology reporter, BBC News, Dallas" R) i2 _6 N0 P) u
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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.
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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.1 e( U2 C3 Y( Z+ U1 e0 b& ?
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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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. F" S% k, e' Z$ ^0 G" JThe 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., m, G$ k% q8 E4 ]/ o" }% T
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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.. o8 K: M: j! y4 h3 ~/ w
$ q. S/ H- p/ j2 _9 d# n: `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.! _1 a% N! q4 e% U2 s% L
: R( t9 u" u! z' l3 h) y/ jAt its heart is the competition between speakers of different languages, and the \"utility\" of speaking one instead of another. a, ?; \8 |' N5 y. l b& D9 l* U
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\"The idea is pretty simple,\" said Richard Wiener of the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, and the University of Arizona.' p0 A& i; f1 @) t T
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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.\"+ {4 I& N' a/ n$ @
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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%.\"
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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.
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- J9 o' l8 Z) u* nAnd 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.
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& V& h% V8 e0 B4 `7 E; J\"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.4 {7 Q" n5 N q% f: e
* g6 _3 D, a) T5 [# LHowever, he told BBC News that he thought it was \"a suggestive result\".
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/ W/ @' h& O- q1 R8 W& }\"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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