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 behavior 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. »
Jason Palmer (Science and technology reporter)
BBC News, Dallas
The AntiChrist
History Channel, USA, 2005, 100 min
‘How would you recognize the most evil person on Earth? According to many historical texts, you should look for a brilliant, enigmatic public figure who transforms the world for good – for a while. Basically, the last person you’d tap as Satan’s human emissary. While many believe the Antichrist has come and gone, just as many believe he will soon arrive, if he’s not already in our midst.
THE ANTICHRIST takes a harrowing look at an evil so obscure that he answers only to Satan. Follow the emergence of the Antichrist from pre-Judaic texts, through the Book of Daniel and Revelation, into Christian writings of the Middle Ages, and beyond. Aided by interviewees with eminent clergy, scholars, historians and psychologists, this incisive program examines the evil enigma from every conceivable angle.’
Angeli Bianchi… Angeli Neri (The Occult Experience)
Luigi Scattini, Italy, 1969, 95 min
A mondo style report of satanic rites from around the world. Includes devil worshipping, voodoo cults, church of satan, black magic, naked exorcism and pagan rituals.
March 24, 2011 on Fox News
***
John Joseph (Cro-Mags) fait apparemment parti du nombre (hashtag léger malaise):
John Joseph on Japan disaster: « Killing is killing »
Punknews.org, Saturday April 2 2011
In a new interview with Approaching Oblivion, John Joseph of Cro-Mags was asked his thoughts on the recent Japan earthquake/tsunami, and had some interesting things to say about it to say the least:
« Let me say this. Collective karma exists and Japan has been going all over the world cutting the fins off of sharks, killing whales, dolphins, and absolutely bleeding the ocean and over fishing. You know what? The ocean came back ashore, man. Killing is killing. Let’s get down to the basics. It’s the universal law of karma. All the countries maintaining slaughterhouses, killing billions of animals every year this is just one big pressure cooker that is getting ready to go off.
I’ve always been an outspoken dude and people may or may not agree with me, but I can’t please everybody. I just got to speak what I know to be truth. »
Joseph has been vegan for 30 years and has been involved with the Hare Krishna movement for some time.
