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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6 x; a; @4 u9 |" L8 V. t
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; O1 T& a! K0 X; ~http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12811197% y! `" n% E- t8 i
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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 B1 N; M% u" |. p# B
; G& X* V- ]; w9 W& v5 ~% IScience and technology reporter, BBC News, Dallas
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7 a+ _6 { g3 J! M; pA study using census data from nine countries shows that religion there is set for extinction, say researchers.
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9 U& ?3 C1 _0 i! e& D1 jThe study found a steady rise in those claiming no religious affiliation.
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1 e3 L4 u! A; _1 s6 X8 P0 I. JThe team\'s mathematical model attempts to account for the interplay between the number of religious respondents and the social motives behind being one.0 [4 i7 |: y" ]! n4 ?7 c
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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.
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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.
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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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9 f1 C$ ]$ w' t$ j\"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.+ M$ {2 o! E( A# A N
! ]# a" |) Y T \\"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.\"3 W, b8 A/ v! Z" E. \7 m5 W y
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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.
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7 o2 I( U" j+ v3 B c, qThey 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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And in all the countries, the indications were that religion was headed toward extinction.
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6 K5 L) A" j& V4 Y8 R! gHowever, 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.( o4 x# z( p' O5 F7 f" N
$ B' n' u# [; k" Z! r" |, k& iHowever, he told BBC News that he thought it was \"a suggestive result\". $ K, a* L) W: [ w
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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.1 } {2 w1 U4 R" q4 T
, C' O, x0 @1 Z4 ]! v. m6 M& J. V g\"Obviously much more complicated things are going on with any one individual, but maybe a lot of that averages out.\" |
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