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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12811197
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: {% n [. G4 N7 q# |22 March 2011 Last updated at 03:31 ET Share this pageFacebookTwitter ShareEmail Print Religion may become extinct in nine nations, study saysBy Jason Palmer6 S4 b$ S1 C( y9 C! M. g3 |
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Science and technology reporter, BBC News, Dallas% `0 y1 p2 t2 N
4 x1 o5 h( e* f; f( o U% o1 kA study using census data from nine countries shows that religion there is set for extinction, say researchers.1 k$ d+ e% @' H3 O9 T) g
2 p- c- r1 O; Z/ C9 h0 m: g8 uThe 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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, |8 V7 q$ n3 @ KThe 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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0 v# q% D2 D7 M& pThe 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.& }4 |5 T! \% T8 D
$ h- j' s/ p- V9 {0 e: aTheir 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.* ~6 `. e/ a) H$ `
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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.
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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, F. G6 w2 x: F! j/ c: e) s\"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.# N- p" h- j# F
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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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6 o# O* J ^. D5 iDr 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%.\" @# X" M2 X, ~' N+ g M3 I
, z9 S" {; `) q8 h" C0 k; jThe 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.# z2 B$ s" C. @( M: U1 V: `
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And in all the countries, the indications were that religion was headed toward extinction.
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, f' u0 C/ k( W9 X& G9 W GHowever, 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. \9 d, y' Z l
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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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- P# @, Q- j3 XHowever, he told BBC News that he thought it was \"a suggestive result\". + H+ l( p: s1 `, ]8 `7 f& r
1 H9 `6 ~5 |/ i% {, |" ~- q+ |) k\"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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