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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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5 b% o% U5 m+ O" S, {http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12811197) e5 m( ?; i, r8 S: A
$ v2 `3 q- o) n4 _& t$ E! j+ e. b22 March 2011 Last updated at 03:31 ET Share this pageFacebookTwitter ShareEmail Print Religion may become extinct in nine nations, study saysBy Jason Palmer3 `' `/ U: @) _& b
1 I8 P0 X. a- QScience and technology reporter, BBC News, Dallas2 m5 X8 n* R+ N1 U; i
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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.& e P( {/ ~, P/ d0 K
4 z/ f" n* H( ^: _) G# _The result, reported at the American Physical Society meeting in Dallas, US, indicates that religion will all but die out altogether in those countries./ G: P1 P/ t* V7 N1 P8 ]
( J- j! {; g. N: d( c, lThe 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 ?9 J- e& P) Y" U
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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.# M: d" e, D- Z5 c1 Q5 ?
& ~+ H" w S. i' _* FOne 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.- c7 y& Y: e: X) l2 ]" q6 v! u8 K
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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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9 l0 R+ n/ d# a! @0 K8 e; n\"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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2 H9 Z9 h) [# f3 _' v\"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%.\"
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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.9 {* E1 a, \% f5 L4 C: N9 G5 k
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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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( x1 M- G7 Q$ p( ], uAnd in all the countries, the indications were that religion was headed toward extinction.
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% L+ ^9 ^2 U" W; E n2 {" {; N$ CHowever, 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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# J [0 t6 m$ i\"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.: _$ e4 V- ^' y
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However, he told BBC News that he thought it was \"a suggestive result\". & l; @9 s1 ]) X+ m& ^& V+ Q
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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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