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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! @6 V% u6 I% [. r* z8 \1 d/ r
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8 J6 K" v' ]: n# v9 G1 P; {! c6 ^http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12811197
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9 ~7 S! m5 g) @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 ]& C5 c, [# [( g: l# L# e3 C
1 a. j& T2 L; v5 i# pScience and technology reporter, BBC News, Dallas
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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." f: l. ~: T" g' P9 K6 U4 s: a- X' ?
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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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: X. E( Q- m4 _7 `5 L1 BThe 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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2 D& H- F$ {1 p$ eTheir 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.8 Z, B* t, n o
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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.: a) J% i0 b' B! U2 I
) q0 E- X- g" M7 p7 ?; |At 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.
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6 n4 g' V( v1 ?9 h( d\"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.4 f* o+ U# b( Z: h9 Z8 @: i3 z2 B$ L
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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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. l, e6 \3 z W2 t0 n+ u$ zDr 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%.\"8 ~* L8 z, g ~2 ]
$ C7 b" _$ q% WThe 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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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.7 i& `) L3 V' A! \
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And in all the countries, the indications were that religion was headed toward extinction.7 ~1 K. ]; w. R9 v0 L3 b
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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.0 c" P) S/ q v* t, f" y% |3 x$ x
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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.; f( @ v; j& Q7 X/ }! m- l4 G
% l7 P) _. P* _7 a5 Y5 RHowever, he told BBC News that he thought it was \"a suggestive result\".
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7 F! w; p+ a. J* u3 B1 K- T\"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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