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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# O9 p6 s: X5 B* ^8 D
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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 Palmer
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5 j- J( S a6 xScience and technology reporter, BBC News, Dallas9 w! ]! R2 Z! j: n1 f# ^
) w. t5 S6 h- j6 SA study using census data from nine countries shows that religion there is set for extinction, say researchers.$ X9 k6 i9 N% A* I) e* J5 L( E
& p/ j8 e4 |4 CThe study found a steady rise in those claiming no religious affiliation.
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- t6 P' X* q4 o+ ]9 D# ~# iThe 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.4 @7 u$ Z3 |# K- d/ y
4 B+ K9 Z- h+ mThe 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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Q- ]$ O7 K+ \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./ h* l! A2 Z1 v K
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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.4 p9 D% r! `: k; H3 u' y' G4 r
1 E& \$ V( H% X4 u; f8 YAt 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.: h% F- W# _9 i- ~6 |
5 I/ @; `; g, H7 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.- W8 d8 b/ z+ f9 Y2 G2 ?! h" K* z, U
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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.\"
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! a) W+ r5 w: J, v* xDr 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%.\"/ z, }9 O4 Q V7 I+ d. w
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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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6 ]# ]2 C. \% U) D1 f& @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.9 B6 h* d8 P9 n/ f5 \! `* ]! \8 u
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And in all the countries, the indications were that religion was headed toward extinction.3 z5 W' `% j+ t* l1 v
2 @. [; K9 v, e$ F1 o7 THowever, 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., x0 k, n( _6 i2 }$ A. e" i
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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.
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However, he told BBC News that he thought it was \"a suggestive result\". 5 A* B9 _& c) {4 b
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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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