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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; F# ^4 `6 r" A! Q' d0 L) I* t8 s) c
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: A+ V( l4 n& j* yhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12811197* m5 m7 B. @% z9 q" P5 M6 Q% }8 N
' f' V6 I( \; E: a, w22 March 2011 Last updated at 03:31 ET Share this pageFacebookTwitter ShareEmail Print Religion may become extinct in nine nations, study saysBy Jason Palmer; ]6 q* H' K R# }
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Science and technology reporter, BBC News, Dallas% @/ j# T3 m' A2 l
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A study using census data from nine countries shows that religion there is set for extinction, say researchers.) q& f" c; a) m& T6 w& _0 {$ [
3 \2 I, x; v8 o& O/ X, lThe study found a steady rise in those claiming no religious affiliation.) R% C' _9 W( I5 E5 ]$ t: j
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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.% N9 K$ }) e; f1 V3 |
8 _' J, _8 `* k2 T5 t4 Q; }The result, reported at the American Physical Society meeting in Dallas, US, indicates that religion will all but die out altogether in those countries.9 p+ | C& T8 Q1 t7 p% |* T
$ s, [& q8 w- h- d; v& tThe 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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5 {+ `' |/ B; j3 [ fOne 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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At its heart is the competition between speakers of different languages, and the \"utility\" of speaking one instead of another.2 z& A* p, d, ?5 D3 C3 W4 m% s8 A
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\"The idea is pretty simple,\" said Richard Wiener of the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, and the University of Arizona.
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. O7 [$ h0 X. r\"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./ C0 o" Q; L0 ]
5 u$ N1 S+ [# b5 O6 g B% j\"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.\"! C7 Y9 q7 W j/ j, v/ u
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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%.\"2 k' N4 c5 i7 }) j$ \/ n
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The 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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& f' O: ]& r9 BThey 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.4 R6 c: p9 X3 R" Z# i) U
, v6 P3 m$ B0 L# c5 rAnd in all the countries, the indications were that religion was headed toward extinction.
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0 N6 G' R# L+ u' `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., }! I9 X( L) v. b* ^1 A @
! m9 b$ o0 J! L7 z0 d\"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.. O; D, N, G: l1 v
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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.
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0 S d$ j- `+ ~\"Obviously much more complicated things are going on with any one individual, but maybe a lot of that averages out.\" |
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