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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0 Y9 p$ o+ H& V0 O
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12811197
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1 D" t& y0 q8 R" @7 \0 ?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 ]3 o( h9 O# e) E/ @7 m( `7 A
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Science and technology reporter, BBC News, Dallas
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, n: l& d% \; O# y& ~# pA study using census data from nine countries shows that religion there is set for extinction, say researchers.& }5 R( G% n7 Z; }# C) i4 S0 k
g2 c j: M7 l0 mThe study found a steady rise in those claiming no religious affiliation.
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5 ~# ^- T0 Q5 W& o' ?2 ZThe team\'s mathematical model attempts to account for the interplay between the number of religious respondents and the social motives behind being one.8 {2 C0 u* q" n7 D: S( x
1 J; m; w3 f9 [7 H# t7 gThe result, reported at the American Physical Society meeting in Dallas, US, indicates that religion will all but die out altogether in those countries.1 f5 K( C, t. g
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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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; \+ ~1 t! S6 o2 QTheir 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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$ h! g* `/ h0 E. \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.( x6 Z+ o$ |! g6 ^0 z/ e
0 A3 g1 y2 s% p9 ~; v7 dAt 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.6 I4 u% N* r4 [; s$ _; r- v
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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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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%.\"0 s* g- `& n0 T3 Z6 x r) s) C
+ W0 l8 W$ c& ~8 w. j+ S2 L; B. \( fThe 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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- J5 O& C( }9 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.
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. t/ ?0 J- k8 V; R% L6 i9 J- l6 pAnd in all the countries, the indications were that religion was headed toward extinction.
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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 ^. M7 R R) w) k
- C3 @# K1 o; p9 i% o\"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\". 6 H( Z% A/ B9 t: [
% s& X) ~$ m: z+ B" 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.* H! Z l( j$ c1 a
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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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