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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1 y o0 e1 w; f% M I. U7 V
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9 w& X- ?/ D3 i& s$ [! W5 [- Ihttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-128111976 \% w9 @& e+ T" Q
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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
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C2 w# X4 @5 I0 f+ a" _Science and technology reporter, BBC News, Dallas3 \2 G9 e" V- Z. q* H5 A
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A study using census data from nine countries shows that religion there is set for extinction, say researchers.
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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.5 n4 j! [0 X7 M! `, X* w, w
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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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) |0 U- g& {# @' NThe 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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/ A$ D+ K/ {& {; H! m# eOne 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.; u) O. f4 ~: t6 b/ g
" m+ Z* A( v7 v, D! x3 KAt its heart is the competition between speakers of different languages, and the \"utility\" of speaking one instead of another.# I4 w% \7 N( p6 P3 F
( ?3 D( x c. g1 f\"The idea is pretty simple,\" said Richard Wiener of the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, and the University of Arizona.
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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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! r f M$ X* h% x' 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.\". {) E# n+ T* d, m# e# v
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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%.\"; U% Y0 L* }4 M! N' i0 @
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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.' ~3 m. r4 Y0 \ N/ v8 n
9 U: V o, V, e9 i3 kThey 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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) Y' h. D- q& v; b" P% hAnd 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.! F$ w' L/ B& l
* B/ `& W7 d# Q2 S, V; C\"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.3 |' y+ e6 h! ^
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However, he told BBC News that he thought it was \"a suggestive result\". ' T! ~' A( L. v9 i; ~& B
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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.! n9 g* `# @7 s% R" U* O
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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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