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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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2 N* Q+ R% b a8 r) o Z22 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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Science and technology reporter, BBC News, Dallas! @$ Z5 `! x8 O4 a0 V8 W }
- o* W' I7 h. S; f+ JA 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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( m* d; N8 a& q8 e+ D" r% e) m3 PThe team\'s mathematical model attempts to account for the interplay between the number of religious respondents and the social motives behind being one.7 g$ T& P0 L/ I
8 `# n' t6 _' RThe result, reported at the American Physical Society meeting in Dallas, US, indicates that religion will all but die out altogether in those countries.2 M. b* S k+ w7 a. \
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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( I* W, M, z
. \) B9 V8 M$ j3 pTheir 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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l" T* `: c3 R9 {At its heart is the competition between speakers of different languages, and the \"utility\" of speaking one instead of another.
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( a- Q; H4 |2 k! |3 ? n o( |\"The idea is pretty simple,\" said Richard Wiener of the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, and the University of Arizona.
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6 f8 ~/ y) x8 \- v, u% l) S* @\"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.\"6 O. Q7 n6 q& j C. |
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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%.\"5 K, l: j5 D& Y2 n& z
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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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`( k8 b" C! y3 B3 g" [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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And in all the countries, the indications were that religion was headed toward extinction.
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! _% s/ P& P! q1 VHowever, 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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0 r# }' ^/ H, J+ K* H/ x\"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.2 P, T3 ?" o2 \1 }" A1 w! O5 d
, F4 Q& |6 c7 |5 J; N- l- ~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.. o o5 }! i; z
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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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