Faith no more! From New Zealand to Canada, religion 'to become extinct' in nine countries



Religion is on course to virtually die out in nine countries, according to a new study.

Research using census data from a selection of countries concluded there is a steady rise in people claiming no religious affiliation.

The findings, unveiled at a American Physical Society meeting in Dallas, was drawn from data stretching back 100 years from these countries: Australia, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Switzerland.

Outdated: Pope Benedict XVI in Rome's St Peter Square. According to a new study, even mainly Catholic countries like Ireland are losing their religion

The study was carried out by Northwestern University and the University of Arizona.

Richard Wiener, of the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, led the scientific survey.

He said: '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%.'

Empty: Churches across the world are seeing dwindling numbers as more and more people choose not to be affiliated with one particular religion

Mr Wiener did, however, admit the highly-formulaic study only provided ‘suggestive results’ and recognised it did not represent the structure of modern society with the way it calculated each person being influenced equally by all other people.

It followed a formula used in 2003 research on 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 BBC reports.

Mr Wiener said: 'The idea is pretty simple: social groups that have more members are going to be more attractive to join.

'For example, there can be greater utility or status in speaking Spanish instead of the dying language of Quechuan in Peru, and similarly there's some kind of status or utility in being a member of a religion or not.'

Put simply, it shows that social groups have a kind of 'gravity' that drags in more people the bigger they are.

Unwanted? The Bible and Rosary, rapidly disappearing items in homes across the world if this latest study is to be believed

The same principle can be seen on the web when it comes to the growth of some social networking sites over others.

The paper adds: 'Some other competitive social systems in which identical or very similar models may apply include, for example, smoker versus non-smoker, vegetarian versus meat-eater, obese versus non-obese, and Mac user versus PC user.'

Mrs Wiener said: '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.'