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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" U0 O5 A5 ]: X6 Z) r7 }
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& N- r) z* `# ?; M. }; `: w+ shttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-128111978 _) P8 q8 N Z0 S
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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 Palmer4 ^1 c* h5 j9 r- M& V M; `9 U+ X# R
5 [: B9 r* x" }* |0 HScience and technology reporter, BBC News, Dallas
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6 _( f, o |* eA study using census data from nine countries shows that religion there is set for extinction, say researchers.+ T9 A% y9 \, w5 r% V" s% @
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The 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.
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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.% e: `0 s0 P0 u- U1 n
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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.
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& \, T1 A" t; F6 k+ S8 X& }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.+ o1 ~! n: I1 s% {) }* Y
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At its heart is the competition between speakers of different languages, and the \"utility\" of speaking one instead of another.# \5 r, ?" ~; F$ `9 @
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\"The idea is pretty simple,\" said Richard Wiener of the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, and the University of Arizona.$ z6 |- P% `$ M0 k8 \ o$ S% J! {
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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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F% b+ ]* O2 f0 @9 \) S\"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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5 c9 j* w+ _/ Y/ H( f p F$ [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%.\"; y3 l7 p1 h8 o& O) s) y
8 p2 c8 e, Z hThe team then applied their nonlinear dynamics model, adjusting parameters for the relative social and utilitarian merits of membership of the \"non-religious\" category.; K3 {, r& m( i9 k1 k2 ^" Z: 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.
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And in all the countries, the indications were that religion was headed toward extinction.
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2 [' S4 [! j5 h, n$ U vHowever, 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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" D1 F1 S& Q" D6 ?6 A; J# v/ B$ ]\"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.: A6 t6 L6 n% \' r
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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.# y7 T+ j c) F% y. ^ [0 f
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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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