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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+ e( i; h7 }% Y- b
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7 B* i0 w- q0 I- Q, dhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12811197
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# A- s" a2 [% W9 I8 P& L- T9 N- @22 March 2011 Last updated at 03:31 ET Share this pageFacebookTwitter ShareEmail Print Religion may become extinct in nine nations, study saysBy Jason Palmer7 ^; d+ o/ d$ ]5 ?. D7 N
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Science and technology reporter, BBC News, Dallas
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* e, w2 c9 ^% U6 U. B& HA study using census data from nine countries shows that religion there is set for extinction, say researchers.
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$ n5 x- f5 F! x) }# ~5 ]9 N* xThe 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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' k( l6 i- N. h/ G; MThe result, reported at the American Physical Society meeting in Dallas, US, indicates that religion will all but die out altogether in those countries./ q3 {4 @3 O1 X: W7 f( M5 j* k
6 }5 c/ p4 p4 e( G8 I5 y3 ?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./ _9 S7 F/ M7 N) a9 Y
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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. L8 O' R# O9 q, |) }. g& K5 l- F) R
9 t+ Q. d* Q k1 H4 v! K1 Q( VAt 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.$ j5 K3 G/ |5 N8 V9 H: \
- N+ u6 [0 U$ d& @6 [6 K\"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.$ n- p4 E! y! u6 e* V0 U
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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.\"7 V1 s5 l' r# O) J$ d2 b0 o5 m" c
2 V; h3 h, j7 w+ T$ s7 X8 e: @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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0 X) s' k1 v$ I5 PThe 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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8 U. t( ^5 |% D; EThey 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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1 r$ M( G% T, g" k1 o' J( p6 pAnd in all the countries, the indications were that religion was headed toward extinction.8 j6 r. K! Z* z; t( U# v' F
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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.
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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.5 n, u! K7 Y6 C5 M2 Z/ m: D w& Z3 T
6 F5 p. s0 B/ V- |( ZHowever, he told BBC News that he thought it was \"a suggestive result\".
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9 B* w( K5 [' k4 h; s$ n\"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.9 | z: v" G" g. ]# v5 z
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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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