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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: F2 m1 Z: f) |" z, b& p+ ^
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& z- [. w d h& @2 f/ Qhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12811197
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# V7 q0 z7 e% L% q) _ m4 t- S) R22 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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6 P) p& f' U& R( [Science 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.* Y# o" Z! @2 W& X- i: b
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The study found a steady rise in those claiming no religious affiliation." |; l- ~: d, B+ h! ?8 z$ U
0 Z/ g! s9 H3 j! v" e7 nThe team\'s mathematical model attempts to account for the interplay between the number of religious respondents and the social motives behind being one.7 ~2 ^6 I! k$ Q! Q% v' U8 T# ^
/ b+ P! T# A" _4 o+ fThe 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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- l7 l. u7 t& hThe 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.- z* U$ U9 S6 U4 M
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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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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.
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2 F1 `, T/ A* S5 }# B0 p# eAt its heart is the competition between speakers of different languages, and the \"utility\" of speaking one instead of another.0 `* T5 D' G8 L$ B1 i
" q* e& E, l" S/ }; ], Y k- E3 Q\"The idea is pretty simple,\" said Richard Wiener of the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, and the University of Arizona.
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5 @$ T: E: C9 L( L' ?6 i |: v5 q\"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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g- t' D; w( a7 Y\"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.\"7 f/ c( Q$ I+ q1 ?
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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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/ W, I4 Z" \' x3 k; y) \0 z8 J0 qThe team then applied their nonlinear dynamics model, adjusting parameters for the relative social and utilitarian merits of membership of the \"non-religious\" category.; m+ S, C' j; K
6 W. X! {: i; U5 x x) ]% s% n5 AThey 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.( |, }8 Z" |" @& R% s5 X
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And in all the countries, the indications were that religion was headed toward extinction.
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1 l$ @4 U/ w x2 Q u, r) wHowever, 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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" i+ A* C, y6 `( W0 J# e\"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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! e; a# D6 {/ g8 q4 S( `7 O# k6 @/ KHowever, he told BBC News that he thought it was \"a suggestive result\".
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! f% u; z/ B. I: k9 f\"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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