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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 M! m: N% k0 E9 W4 m: R/ N
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- e4 W8 q- p, t9 k" uhttp://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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7 ~) g* W$ \8 L3 _6 n3 fScience and technology reporter, BBC News, Dallas L; T: R: L& v5 T9 S/ O4 L
; O! [, M# T' l! t9 DA study using census data from nine countries shows that religion there is set for extinction, say researchers.
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0 E8 ?3 e9 d) O& DThe study found a steady rise in those claiming no religious affiliation.
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The team\'s mathematical model attempts to account for the interplay between the number of religious respondents and the social motives behind being one.6 a! v- ^2 c1 p! v; b
' t2 a0 p. o: W( OThe 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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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.3 _& J' d& Z. B
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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.+ O& Z: |8 ~) Y( s/ x! e% H: B
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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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. `% P: ~( t0 y' G9 f4 e' MAt its heart is the competition between speakers of different languages, and the \"utility\" of speaking one instead of another.9 R2 P% m+ ^7 _; Z( {1 j! ~1 ?
5 b; e# U9 l% C5 Y\"The idea is pretty simple,\" said Richard Wiener of the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, and the University of Arizona. e, `2 b, _& n. s4 _+ m
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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.\" s2 ^* A, l* u9 P
2 b% f! q% H: p- T2 \, HDr 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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: h; B! {4 J* {& E' K) `4 l6 q* oThe team then applied their nonlinear dynamics model, adjusting parameters for the relative social and utilitarian merits of membership of the \"non-religious\" category.& k( c4 b! v& c5 `* g
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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.4 f7 r3 F1 ]/ I! V9 z& j
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And in all the countries, the indications were that religion was headed toward extinction.
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0 i' D/ M, ]8 D# IHowever, 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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% \6 {" E: ~6 G7 x* @- u# E' p\"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\". % @* }+ A0 J' S- c/ {& v
9 v8 Q8 \; Z, o\"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 H9 C1 N/ F/ p9 g
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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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