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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$ D4 E, p' f6 F! r
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) ?. s d' J- C* Z C3 d. B. Vhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12811197( J& S! g9 X8 U3 a0 t
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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( \. x9 |5 x( l. f: O' w
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Science and technology reporter, BBC News, Dallas' o1 o% K6 l' u7 B
1 F9 v9 G: \( R% K3 \A study using census data from nine countries shows that religion there is set for extinction, say researchers.( c" g$ @$ i2 O; u O
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The study found a steady rise in those claiming no religious affiliation.
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( ^8 U8 C& I0 [) o! F. bThe team\'s mathematical model attempts to account for the interplay between the number of religious respondents and the social motives behind being one.9 g3 U5 w* W: b8 m
! u' h, ]% J( K4 [% dThe 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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. ~; q7 @, H( k% 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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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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$ o0 C; v' ]+ P0 S$ _5 z# U1 pAt its heart is the competition between speakers of different languages, and the \"utility\" of speaking one instead of another.
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4 K0 G+ F/ u* f& B\"The idea is pretty simple,\" said Richard Wiener of the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, and the University of Arizona.
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\"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.\"
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% B' g: i. X: q$ |+ U* z( ?1 }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.: S0 `% s) a; [1 ?0 w! J" C# l( w
; L w# C5 z: P6 ~- h& HThey 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.. V9 M7 l0 Z( f5 {7 J4 p2 F" t
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And in all the countries, the indications were that religion was headed toward extinction.% p1 B9 E, M% k6 l) n7 }1 _9 K
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However, 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.9 r' u' j' x. ~8 q$ r$ l
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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.8 r3 r% M2 K6 R3 P( V- i6 u
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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.0 M. n+ {3 J& l5 j
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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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