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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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3 Z! v0 _6 f- c22 March 2011 Last updated at 03:31 ET Share this pageFacebookTwitter ShareEmail Print Religion may become extinct in nine nations, study saysBy Jason Palmer* x8 c1 }2 X# |+ X$ G* u
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Science and technology reporter, BBC News, Dallas
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- B2 `3 I% x& R) d+ gA 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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The team\'s mathematical model attempts to account for the interplay between the number of religious respondents and the social motives behind being one.1 C- L6 j" m/ r9 w7 [3 \
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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.
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4 |( d" ^% c0 N% D" i9 L9 n3 ]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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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.- z) w; x+ ]- k" s7 _
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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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5 n; `6 n. O$ |4 TAt its heart is the competition between speakers of different languages, and the \"utility\" of speaking one instead of another.3 w! `+ a8 m2 {5 k0 L r6 F
1 H8 }6 @9 P4 D$ _4 i) e\"The idea is pretty simple,\" said Richard Wiener of the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, and the University of Arizona.! @6 U+ H, u- B* ?
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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.6 v1 ~, }: z7 p' ^
9 P. B# E" C. V1 n- ~( h1 {( _\"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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6 l; t+ q0 M, ~9 i: D ?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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% I& D3 ? z& G7 wThe team then applied their nonlinear dynamics model, adjusting parameters for the relative social and utilitarian merits of membership of the \"non-religious\" category.9 y8 C7 ]; c9 o! X9 Z
7 G1 G) F4 [: b0 r1 v) XThey 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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" \" z( `: @% X2 n( n, J" Q( fAnd in all the countries, the indications were that religion was headed toward extinction." g8 P' C; t9 e9 c
( Z' c7 W. d6 p& l. r8 @. n+ jHowever, 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.3 I1 x: S$ N w, `
& t2 y- w3 ~+ H0 k\"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\". 7 C7 q0 w; P; ?$ |% v5 m: z
# Y6 A; J# w3 k# Y; g\"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.2 Y9 r* u; ?) E5 d3 z+ I Z( F
# r/ s; Q/ E, |! @) f! B, [7 I2 c( S\"Obviously much more complicated things are going on with any one individual, but maybe a lot of that averages out.\" |
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