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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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( u/ t" s. G+ o1 ?9 y. r- M22 March 2011 Last updated at 03:31 ET Share this pageFacebookTwitter ShareEmail Print Religion may become extinct in nine nations, study saysBy Jason Palmer- H% b% y. }. [
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Science and technology reporter, BBC News, Dallas# ]6 e9 A+ `) Y! p- G
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A 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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- l' r/ l0 B( T5 e( R% L% \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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8 D! F5 b5 {9 AThe result, reported at the American Physical Society meeting in Dallas, US, indicates that religion will all but die out altogether in those countries.5 |+ B) Y) D, e5 C* r
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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.: n& L& T0 o+ ]: H& A
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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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& E4 K2 p1 B4 X. s: ^% y0 m2 |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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8 q/ L# g. F; b$ {; q( C5 R\"The idea is pretty simple,\" said Richard Wiener of the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, and the University of Arizona./ B9 z9 i6 t; R( i; `( C' J8 n
9 O8 [ s; L% \1 Q& N7 F" g4 R\"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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3 S+ z. p* P0 s0 i\"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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+ L& O% f) a, t. l& G" ADr 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%.\": J) Q! b. f- @* [0 S8 I8 `5 g
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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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8 G7 K8 `2 u) K- {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.# ?# l! D1 J) N) T9 Z2 H
! Z) Y& l; z/ c7 mHowever, 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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1 _9 p( V0 l. a0 W: N/ s0 u\"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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3 N# H9 o: _$ P2 J) t) Z' V s6 @- vHowever, he told BBC News that he thought it was \"a suggestive result\". . C. h+ D( h' p. ^/ b
/ H/ T6 m& E' z% ^\"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." C- D9 [8 L. x4 ]
3 M' |* D- j' l- ]3 \& X\"Obviously much more complicated things are going on with any one individual, but maybe a lot of that averages out.\" |
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