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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 Palmer1 k" H8 V% s& t0 Z+ I& a* E
8 J' v0 d! l( l& ?Science and technology reporter, BBC News, Dallas6 F$ i' o0 b/ n" |) o: I0 x9 v
@; [9 y5 c; e H1 A; Q( l: S! 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.& D6 c: n+ X! M& H5 Z
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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., }7 g5 @% t( {/ w+ s
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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.$ N/ d3 K4 I- c
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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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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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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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At its heart is the competition between speakers of different languages, and the \"utility\" of speaking one instead of another." z' u0 O9 l% K# \* e3 V
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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 `6 F6 `# o5 v3 a' q+ D8 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.' x& A$ _5 [1 b8 A$ o, t5 y) d, u, e& |
: k2 I5 `0 _- [\"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.\". h- v& R) ^3 E; y' }' Z& U$ ~
$ _/ x" D0 _ O1 Y4 G% SDr 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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4 R- j. s# [/ v, Z( DThey 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.6 o- N, T( C* x3 M7 E/ U
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And in all the countries, the indications were that religion was headed toward extinction.
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% g0 t* w# Q- ~, [& N% E! H) LHowever, 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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# Z+ h% ~9 ^: ?* O5 m! e& u9 Y\"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.) T: \5 P3 [( P8 h5 n, [/ h! J
* W u0 q4 X- }# U' Q) u( F, Q& ]However, he told BBC News that he thought it was \"a suggestive result\". 2 A% a' _" |& a5 G
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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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