On World Religion Adherence Distribution Evolution

Abstract

Religious adherence can be considered as a degree of freedom, in a statistical physics sense, for a human agent belonging to a population. The distribution, performance and life time of religions can thus be studied having in mind heterogeneous interacting agent modeling in mind. We present a comprehensive analysis of 58 so called religion (to be better defined in the main text) evolutions, as measured through their number of adherents between 1900 and 2000, -data taken from the World Christian Encyclopedia: 40 are considered to be "presently growing" cases, including 11 turn overs in the XX century; 18 are "presently decaying", among which 12 are found to have had a recent maximum, in the XIX or the XX century. The Avrami-Kolmogorov differential equation which usually describes solid state transformations, like crystal growth, is used in each case in order to obtain the preferential attachment parameter introduced previously [1]. It is often found close to unity, indicating a smooth evolution. However large values suggest the occurrence of extreme cases which we conjecture are controlled by so called external fields. A few cases indicate the likeliness of a detachment process. We discuss different growing and decaying religions, and illustrate various fits. Some cases seem to indicate the lack of reliability of the data. Others, departure from Avrami law. We point out two difficulties in the analysis : (i) the "precise" original time of apparition of a religion, (ii) the time of its maximum, both informations being necessary for integrating reliably any evolution equation. Moreover the Avrami evolution equation might be surely improved, in particular, and somewhat obviously, for the decaying religion cases.

Activist model of political party growth

“…Additionally there are statistical physics models of religious adherence [37,38,39] that employ the epidemiological analogy. In particular Ausloos and Petroni [40], Abrams et al [41] draw the parallel between the spread of language and religion. The model of Abrams et al [41] has the same restriction of no inactive members as the Abrams-Strogatz language acquisition model, on which it is based.…”

On Religion and Language Evolutions Seen Through Mathematical and Agent Based Models

“…Accepting as valid the number of adherents of religions from various surveys, "empirical" data can be subsequently analyzed. Examples of religions were found for which the number of adherents is increasing (e.g., Islam), decaying (e.g., Ethnoreligions) or rather stable (e.g., Christianity and Buddhism), -all giving interesting values for h. This has led to a more complete and more detailed analysis of the values of h and of its meaning for 58 "time series" [81] in [79,80]. Anomalous, or unexpected h values have been attributed to so called external field conditions, somewhat based on intuition.…”

Statistical dynamics of religion evolutions

“…The work by FP was originally supported by European Commission Project E2C2 FP6-2003-NEST-Path-012975 Extreme Events: Causes and Consequences. Moreover this paper would not have its form nor content without comments and constructive criticisms by many coworkers, the list being too long to write, see a very selected few in 1,2 and most of all the A. Carbone and G. Kaniadakis invitation to present such considerations at SigmaPhi 2008.…”

“…It bears upon previously published work (Europhys. Lett., 77 (2007 38002 ) 1 and other materials expectedly to be published 2 . In order to maintain originality requirements much has been rewritten though the anlayzed data is exactly the same as that used in 2 , i.e.…”