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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# U8 K# ]! d9 s. b9 |8 ?1 E) I
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8 f$ ^0 H# g( F; s' j! g8 C zhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12811197
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+ `2 z0 T) O1 h4 S22 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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# X: z) G- B! b4 tScience and technology reporter, BBC News, Dallas
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A study using census data from nine countries shows that religion there is set for extinction, say researchers.0 x1 e6 m" K8 C8 d4 }0 Y2 m. S! W; G
$ R$ y: E, l2 R, k$ F8 E+ Q$ g1 MThe study found a steady rise in those claiming no religious affiliation.: s Y! b4 T, o7 N
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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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; l8 ^( u- q9 C) Z- t8 }; mThe 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.
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0 F# u4 q& {* |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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1 w8 G/ S! V: E1 G0 @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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3 K5 u# L0 z5 E4 M7 TAt its heart is the competition between speakers of different languages, and the \"utility\" of speaking one instead of another.
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\"The idea is pretty simple,\" said Richard Wiener of the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, and the University of Arizona.0 G6 t* H! F2 t2 r+ n
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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.\"9 G1 Y! B5 z$ d# N/ p& c
* z* N% A& o2 p$ d& 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%.\"
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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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, z+ {3 Z6 B2 l* z0 o! ~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." t! ~; {8 a/ A
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And in all the countries, the indications were that religion was headed toward extinction.3 W1 K* E8 T* r% z) ]3 h6 D
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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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% f5 p5 u& [$ |8 [\"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.7 `( E- G; n, c# D1 z, I' K. P7 Z
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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.9 r- M5 ]' u( q. O* m1 o
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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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