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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" ~2 o3 f: y: ^/ O9 L8 h, q
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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 Palmer# @; ]" p" B+ ? Q
; m; X* g; v) f) b# hScience 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.( q9 F* e! h4 `5 k; m( d5 n$ ]
H6 u+ j1 q6 l- M0 Y- I7 z+ w, e+ {The study found a steady rise in those claiming no religious affiliation.
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8 @4 h0 [2 w" E* i. H2 X4 sThe 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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The result, reported at the American Physical Society meeting in Dallas, US, indicates that religion will all but die out altogether in those countries. O& t4 l5 [3 L
( g7 H# p- }1 J/ y* x2 k) ~$ wThe 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.& L4 H0 D# _" _6 m8 g; M
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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., s) o8 {9 Q- R/ L$ `$ L2 O
! W, o* E: M n p9 N2 XAt its heart is the competition between speakers of different languages, and the \"utility\" of speaking one instead of another.* M% H* N! i, n( U
% G6 i |" K" X/ O1 Q' b# D8 \; Y\"The idea is pretty simple,\" said Richard Wiener of the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, and the University of Arizona.
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s% f4 C# J8 H/ h6 W\"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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0 O3 r, i+ L3 u\"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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1 U" P l2 a* \) S' k6 j, lDr 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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; K. \, z( K) R( W+ v x3 `7 OThe team then applied their nonlinear dynamics model, adjusting parameters for the relative social and utilitarian merits of membership of the \"non-religious\" category.5 o$ J2 u, _3 G
9 }- N) L3 {1 B7 D6 [5 lThey 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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# O& z& E4 ?9 `* { YAnd in all the countries, the indications were that religion was headed toward extinction.
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/ S6 L# p3 x i8 OHowever, 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.: f1 y6 C$ q9 F1 G2 d
# J6 { p" w% `+ s\"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.
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However, he told BBC News that he thought it was \"a suggestive result\". 5 b7 v. l. n1 f3 v% {" X( }
& E7 t* u6 E$ F* ]\"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.0 q1 B7 r: V& r6 z4 q" E
& n: ^ e9 H( X6 g4 c- [" M2 [, K\"Obviously much more complicated things are going on with any one individual, but maybe a lot of that averages out.\" |
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