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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
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% h& v) r( N' j$ f3 z ~http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12811197
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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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0 I2 \% g& w, y1 {! G' CScience and technology reporter, BBC News, Dallas; _9 D/ ` [& x+ V
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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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1 H) l' M9 o7 O& A- }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.
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3 K0 k) X+ w6 M5 R# d4 T, UThe 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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The 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.( _# B) T5 k0 ?$ U( l
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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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At its heart is the competition between speakers of different languages, and the \"utility\" of speaking one instead of another.
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/ F8 B& q8 W' J* u\"The idea is pretty simple,\" said Richard Wiener of the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, and the University of Arizona.
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( w; g2 `: q% F7 C( S\"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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# V7 B0 r3 ?3 Z/ X2 c: q7 u" `$ x/ E\"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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6 H; n2 r7 k( VDr 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%.\") ?: e% r) h# w! ~2 Z
/ ^6 i! x8 n/ W$ _/ O _% GThe 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.% R/ c; V2 J# }8 U
& o0 I& v- A$ [& x2 aAnd in all the countries, the indications were that religion was headed toward extinction.$ N( l3 ~, u1 V, a* y$ l
. R2 v' e- T& n) iHowever, 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.3 c5 B. H, s9 e
" k' L1 g @' W5 j$ H\"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\". 6 v. |7 K) n) ]0 {1 e4 j3 `
, K+ r% g+ f( M\"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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