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Religion to become extinct

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A study using census data shows that religion is heading for extinction in Australia, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Switzerland. The study, presented at the American Physical Society meeting in Dallas, found a steady rise in those claiming no religious affiliation. The research team's mathematical model attempts to account for the interplay between the number of religious respondents and the social motives behind being one.

The team took census data stretching back as far as a century on religious affiliation. 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 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.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12811197?print=true
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