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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& l M- |9 ^8 R& Z% t
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! B" v, @4 _3 t) c1 o. xhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12811197# } _6 d3 ]3 Q. O9 a
3 ]3 X" N& I; I- ~. G6 @22 March 2011 Last updated at 03:31 ET Share this pageFacebookTwitter ShareEmail Print Religion may become extinct in nine nations, study saysBy Jason Palmer0 e9 x# o! t1 T/ X7 X$ K0 w4 Z
; l# ~* c, u% a- O# L3 c, P' XScience and technology reporter, BBC News, Dallas
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* b; k) C9 U1 `8 T+ R- OA study using census data from nine countries shows that religion there is set for extinction, say researchers./ q& L+ J7 H* u% t' Q/ Q: O3 y* q
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The study found a steady rise in those claiming no religious affiliation.1 ^. Y3 b! \5 Y0 v% o' L
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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.# F' _% E* L6 L& m3 N# ?
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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.6 { {) ]/ j, s$ B7 M% p
# G+ j0 r( P2 s4 f& g- h9 p7 P T1 fThe 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.5 i; z E* g% [9 X. |
& F6 t9 J$ r% U) X1 B' uOne 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.
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# A9 r$ h( Z' Q" p) z\"The idea is pretty simple,\" said Richard Wiener of the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, and the University of Arizona.: O8 P* u# P% u3 z r. s/ ~( g& S$ g
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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.\"" O, d6 q+ ^9 V* j
) ^% p: O# |6 `+ JDr 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%.\"; {3 x5 g, \( B
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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.( e& N% \0 P& S; D! C( B, b
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They 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./ Y, t& X' M, K" l- W
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And 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.
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$ b! V4 r+ L. T" d' 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.
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However, he told BBC News that he thought it was \"a suggestive result\". 4 H# z4 X! f! m! D9 [8 T
! {) u) m( T7 n4 B\"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 _8 Q. ]: h7 U/ j2 X0 }
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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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