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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 e: D( a6 K( N4 t( F
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12811197- Z, y: \+ P R$ { r d
& S( O# F. D, w3 H6 G: Z; x. P22 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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Science and technology reporter, BBC News, Dallas/ ?3 {6 M2 X& E D* j% h
8 i7 j9 Q" J P+ f. A$ |$ aA 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.- t" v p# r4 w K
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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.5 b4 j0 G+ m/ }, F& M
' ?9 @) g9 u @ ]# {0 z7 lTheir 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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& S4 s* B. [- k1 iOne 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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/ R* r- N7 H& N+ A. U: ^At its heart is the competition between speakers of different languages, and the \"utility\" of speaking one instead of another.
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7 F# o) s% T# l1 U5 p& F\"The idea is pretty simple,\" said Richard Wiener of the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, and the University of Arizona.
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* v( O }, i" N) v6 M! Y\"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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' f n! S1 D: W: y\"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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/ b3 Q' ]$ a7 H1 o! L3 j! `# Z: T* tDr 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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. p; o% p- L" E5 L6 I# p4 y4 c6 `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.; o i+ J+ K p6 S4 F: @" [5 W
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And in all the countries, the indications were that religion was headed toward extinction.6 J9 d1 r- P0 V* n- x9 P
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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.) W3 n8 T2 G, ^# a! ~) u, B
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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\". 9 E# z# n; i( \+ A/ \
* X3 F- V/ b- c\"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.3 ~: m) X" h5 F3 E1 q
! N( a6 \4 a* r- [- `+ Q' {\"Obviously much more complicated things are going on with any one individual, but maybe a lot of that averages out.\" |
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