http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12811197
BBC News Science & Environment
22 March 2011 Last updated at 07:31 GMT
Religion may become extinct in nine nations, study says
Comments (403)
By Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC News, Dallas
A study using census data from nine countries shows that religion there is set
for extinction, say researchers.
The study found a steady rise in those claiming no religious affiliation.
The team's mathematical model attempts to account for the interplay between the
number of religious respondents and the social motives behind being one.
The result, reported at the American Physical Society meeting in Dallas, US,
indicates that religion will all but die out altogether in those countries.
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.
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.
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.
At its heart is the competition between speakers of different languages, and
the "utility" of speaking one instead of another.
"The idea is pretty simple," said Richard Wiener of the Research Corporation
for Science Advancement, and the University of Arizona.
"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.
"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."
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%."
The team then applied their nonlinear dynamics model, adjusting parameters for
the relative social and utilitarian merits of membership of the "non-religious"
category.
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.
And in all the countries, the indications were that religion was headed toward
extinction.
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.
"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.
However, he told BBC News that he thought it was "a suggestive result".
"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.
"Obviously much more complicated things are going on with any one individual,
but maybe a lot of that averages out."
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Comment number 314.
rdafisher
22nd March 2011 - 22:24
I don't see the decline of religion to be a particularly bad thing. And I
say this as a Born-again follower of Jesus. To me relationship with God is so
much more.
Religion implies strict rules and rituals which must be followed in order
to gain some kind of benefit or reward at the end. This may appear a good
thing, but history has proven all too often that religion is an excuse to fight.
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-6
Comment number 313.
BethW
22nd March 2011 - 22:22
One cannot study the universe and possibly conclude that there is no God.
It is far too precise, interwoven, complex. Yet, men in their pride exalt their
thinking to conclude that there is no God. Yet,God formed the mind of men. To
think that mankind just "happened" shows no logical reasoning at all that there
was not a divine order and creation to our universe.
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+5
Comment number 266.
brownLivewire
22nd March 2011 - 21:03
The sooner religon is consigned to history the better. There is no place in
modern society for myths and legends, (except as a good story).
I cannot understand how otherwise intelegent people can belive in a
supreame being that controls all of our lives. This is just a throwback to the
uneducated trying to rasionalise he workings of nature by inventing something
to attribute it to!
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+4
Comment number 101.
kenny walker
22nd March 2011 - 17:45
This is definitely obvious in my age group (students), you will be hard
pressed to find many who believe strongly in a religion of one kind. I think
that religion is a natural human way to comprehend what we didn't understand,
filling in the gaps of our knowledge until we found rational scientific
explanations for things, in the developed world, religion is running out of
gaps to fill.
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+1
Comment number 100.
colemany2k
22nd March 2011 - 17:45
As an Irishman I'm not surprised in the least that Ireland is on that list.
Irish people under the age of 30 have mostly rejected religion and the one's
getting married in church do it as a symbolic gesture. The youth do not want to
upset older relatives by openly rejecting religon...this will lead to a silent
death for religon in Ireland.
I for one say...good riddance!
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