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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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5 S9 `9 Z M9 Q1 k$ wScience and technology reporter, BBC News, Dallas
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7 ^% a2 m! N$ f& ]4 m4 RA 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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- a+ w' D: W* lThe team\'s mathematical model attempts to account for the interplay between the number of religious respondents and the social motives behind being one.9 q7 P. [( _4 \0 y( s1 Q
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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.& n9 \( A1 g/ j3 K4 @. E: _8 u
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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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3 e: e7 {, b% j- f- g% qTheir 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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& V0 ^ I6 d$ TOne 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.; z0 O( U, `8 c: e8 ]' g& r
$ e$ O0 P, }, s8 f; Q! nAt its heart is the competition between speakers of different languages, and the \"utility\" of speaking one instead of another.) k" }7 x. @+ _& P: v
' g3 O8 a. h' w0 O7 k9 w/ O5 x\"The idea is pretty simple,\" said Richard Wiener of the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, and the University of Arizona.3 B1 [6 U9 ]/ i) @3 J: d
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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., s4 m3 a7 o6 H$ Y
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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 c+ b8 N' |! \8 e
+ `, d# _* k( \5 S7 d2 [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%.\"1 d% V+ p* D, N
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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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* x* l6 i1 X. ?2 S% i$ B. I8 \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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+ w# B# ^3 s- [- C: V: i6 Z2 qAnd in all the countries, the indications were that religion was headed toward extinction." \/ G1 n- F1 \$ T. Y
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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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\"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.& ?) @! f7 X0 E5 a
, H/ b3 D1 t v v! P2 w' \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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