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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& O5 j4 O" z- l" U$ |: H
+ F( d% A3 \& H5 P9 a22 March 2011 Last updated at 03:31 ET Share this pageFacebookTwitter ShareEmail Print Religion may become extinct in nine nations, study saysBy Jason Palmer, A( W- I+ `! R! A' p& ?
: A5 J0 @- y% r, r/ LScience and technology reporter, BBC News, Dallas( A. f8 k- v2 ^
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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.* g7 e- [' {5 O( h9 d0 N1 T
; E8 ]6 V0 h8 ], g# Y2 E: A1 |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.% g% s$ L T3 R1 Q9 a6 P0 Y" {( l. _
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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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* G5 F, F. t4 C% Q8 X( I3 dOne 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.# p0 m; `% M' c9 V" [ w2 @
3 T4 W3 T, i6 _% W' L0 { i: b2 eAt its heart is the competition between speakers of different languages, and the \"utility\" of speaking one instead of another.3 i g7 i6 Y: S% `0 m+ F; I
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\"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.
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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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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%.\" Q) F4 S/ u' l P6 [6 d
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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., A- H+ u3 n* H7 _, i6 N$ z1 v
, W; S; D6 L: K) dAnd in all the countries, the indications were that religion was headed toward extinction.6 v. o2 n+ e# J8 s1 i$ T
0 |$ Z7 f j' A5 _0 N' RHowever, 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.3 C! O0 ~+ Z2 Y3 u8 z3 ?
1 W3 j- q4 L8 {% [/ M3 m SHowever, he told BBC News that he thought it was \"a suggestive result\".
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3 S6 K7 a/ c9 N7 ?\"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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5 I% q: M# S) i8 T2 k\"Obviously much more complicated things are going on with any one individual, but maybe a lot of that averages out.\" |
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