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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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9 m* u+ {+ y* q$ E+ ~0 P3 b9 ^3 X; Qhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12811197% {' d% _& Z) b3 A, N
) |/ e4 w7 F# r9 {; d( v4 H5 Y22 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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Science and technology reporter, BBC News, Dallas" j" M0 o) ?" [! T [$ L6 f
/ j+ p1 X" _6 ~1 G& gA study using census data from nine countries shows that religion there is set for extinction, say researchers.6 k( X0 ?7 j5 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.8 x8 L& ^' O: `
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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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: ^6 L v8 a9 `. P: H: vThe 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.
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0 l a: P" d* ROne 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.3 m+ e( G5 R' w; ?2 x3 n6 B
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At its heart is the competition between speakers of different languages, and the \"utility\" of speaking one instead of another.
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0 U. R z9 }/ `8 q& [\"The idea is pretty simple,\" said Richard Wiener of the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, and the University of Arizona.* W- f: T+ C3 |
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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.; b5 x" ^. Z- f
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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%.\"
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1 x/ _ @& h" t7 f0 D5 RThe team then applied their nonlinear dynamics model, adjusting parameters for the relative social and utilitarian merits of membership of the \"non-religious\" category. m) l9 c5 w8 C9 M5 g* r0 i1 G
, q) e' q2 B, y7 n9 v4 uThey 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.$ F4 W6 ]2 H5 e5 z5 l, F0 M( {
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And in all the countries, the indications were that religion was headed toward extinction.$ E2 a. J) g& n) L t6 n. L, N
$ l& N( R3 Y7 x8 a1 s! aHowever, 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.6 x: ~6 U- a1 g8 I" y
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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.
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4 ]& d6 O: a; a/ U) bHowever, he told BBC News that he thought it was \"a suggestive result\".
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! S4 m5 @; C6 G; y) u\"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.
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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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