Statistical Dynamics of Religions and Adherents

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Statistical Dynamics of Religions and Adherents
Marcel Ausloos and Filippo Petroni GRAPES
() _at_ SUPRATECS, Univ. Liege, Euroland

() Group for Research and Applications of
Physics in Economy and Sociology
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Table of Contents (1/2)

• Introduction to Society-physics
•  Statistical  vs.  Physical  features of
  Networks
• Static pictures snapshot models
• Evolving models , Dynamics
• Degree(s) of freedom ? Order parameter(s)
• Interactions, Phase diagrams, etc.
• Languages and Religions
• Other cases of sociological networks
• Music listeners and groups
• Opinion formation and communities
• Conclusions

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Table of Contents (2/2)

• Languages and religions
• Languages (5 minutes)
• Empirical Data
• Statistics
• Dynamics
• Religions (25 minutes)
• Empirical Data
• Statistics
• Dynamics

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Modelling the dynamics of language death ()

• Nowak Krakauer, PNAS (99)
• () Abrams Strogatz, Nature (03)
• Dorogovtsev Mendes (01)
• Viviane de Oliveira et al. (05)
• Stauffer et al. (06)
• Thelwall Price (06)
• etc.
• N.B. Evolution equation à la Verhulst

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Verhulst
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Reaction diffusion flow
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of languages vs. of speakers

• language sizes
• 104 (binned in powers of 2)
• Log-normal function
• except for small s
• Language strings of bits, evolving as
  population grows

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Language family sizes

• A computer simulation of language families,
• Paulo Murilo Castro de Oliveira, D Stauffer, S
  Wichmann, Suzana Moss de Oliveira

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Linguistophysics

• Language Cognition / understanding
• Semantics
• Statistics
• Language Evolution
• Grammar
• Vocabulary
• Language Competition
• Size distribution
• Exo- and endo-genous effects

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Definitions (1/2)

• Barns Noble (Cambridge) Encyclopedia (1990)
• "...no single definition will suffice to
  encompass the varied sets of traditions,
  practices, and ideas which constitute different
  religions."
• The Concise Oxford Dictionary (1990)
• "Human recognition of superhuman controlling
  power and especially of a personal God entitled
  to obedience.
• Webster's New World Dictionary (Third College
  Edition)
• "any specific system of belief and worship, often
  involving a code of ethics and a philosophy.
• Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary
• "a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to
  with ardor and faith."

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Definitions (2/2)

• Religion is any specific system of belief about
  deity, often involving rituals, a code of ethics,
  a philosophy of life, and a worldview. (!)
• or
• and
• An adept is an individual identified as having
  attained a specific level of knowledge, skill, or
  aptitude in doctrines relevant to a particular
  (author or) organization.

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Indicators

• Number of groups, sects,
• Number of churches, parishes,
• Number of chapels, sites,
• Number of priests, (clergy)
• Number of believers,
• sex, age, wealth, language
• Intensity of participations,
• Wealth and financing,
• Type of hierarchy,

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Evolutionary view

• Religion needs language, rituals,
• Is there a natural selection (à la Darwin) ?
• Ecological
• Economical
• Ecclesiastical
• Exological
• Endological
• Genetical

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Religiophysics

• Religion Cognition
• History
• Religiometrics
• Religion Evolution
• Gods
• Rituals
• Religion Competition
• Size distributions
• Exo- and endo-genous effects

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Languages vs. Religions

• Quantity
• polyreligious rare
• variety enormous, and yet !
• denominations, sects, cults
• Time scales
• varied (short)
• Rituals
• SOC, avalanches
• Constantine, Khazars, etc.
• deaths
• Applied fields very strong
• Inquisition,

• Quantity
• multilingual frequent
• variety
• dialects, slangs,
• Time scales
• long
• Grammar, Vocabulary
• Nucleation and growth
• deaths
• Applied fields rare

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c
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Clovis ca. 466-(486)-27 Nov., 511
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Spontaneous conversionsKhazars and Karaims

• ' 'judaization" of the Khazars
• Khazars were a Turkish group of tribes and
  nations, who ruled an empire extending east and
  west of the Caspian Sea, from the sixth or
  seventh to the tenth or eleventh centuries. They
  engaged in the eighth century in a bloody
  struggle with the last Umayyad khalif. Around 965
  they were decisively defeated by Russian
  settlers. Their enmity to their Muslim and
  Christian neighbours caused their ruler, part of
  the nobility and apparently also of the people,
  to adopt Judaism around 740. The Karaite version
  has usually been that what they adopted was, in
  fact, Karaism.
• The adoption of the religion of the Old Testament
  by the Khazars, at least by a part of them
  including the court of the kaghan and the court
  dignitaries, occurred according to Hebrew sources
  in the first half of the 8th century, and
  according to the Muslim annalists during the
  reign of calif Harun ar-Rashid (786-809)
• http//www.turkiye.net/sota/karhist.htm

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Forced conversion

• A forced conversion occurs when someone adopts a
  religion or philosophy under the threat that a
  refusal would result in negative non-spiritual
  consequences. These consequences range from job
  loss and social isolation to incarceration,
  torture or death. Typically, such a conversion
  entails the repudiation of former religious or
  philosophical convictions.
• http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_conversion

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Forced conversion Jews and Muslims in Iberia

• During the 15th century, Jews and Muslims in
  Iberia were frequently pressured into converting
  to Christianity. This culminated in their
  expulsion from Spain in 1492. Subsequently, in
  1497, the Jews in Portugal were forcibly
  converted to Christianity. 2
• encouraged and, in about 700 CE, was actually
  forbidden by law.10

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Forced conversion Jews and others in Arab
countries

• Even though occasionally, individual cases of
  forced conversions such as of Ibn Firsa against
  Samaritans can be noticed under Islamic rule,
  Islamic law clearly forbade forced
  conversions.1112 Forced conversions did play
  a key role in some later periods of Islamic
  history, mostly in the 12th century under the
  Almohad dynasty of North Africa and al-Andalus as
  well as in Persia where Shi'a Islam is
  dominant.13
• While Jewish communities in Arab and Islamic
  countries fared better overall than those in
  Christian Europe, Jews were no strangers to
  persecution and humiliation among the Arabs and
  Muslim.
• Frood Fouladvand, a doctor of history and
  religious philosophy, strongly emphasizes the use
  of forced conversion in Islamic nature. He claims
  that the barbarity of forced conversion played a
  significant role of Islams development in early
  stages, relating to the Muslim conquests and
  modern inhumanity in several Islamic-ruling
  territories.

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Discrimination Zoroastrians

• Zoroastrians have faced much religious
  discrimination including forced conversions,
  harassments, as well as being identified as najis
  and impure to some groups of Muslims, while they
  are originally recognized as Ahle Kitab, along
  side with Christians and Jews who have a holy
  scripture, as they believe in one God and His
  prophet, Zarathushtra (GrkZoroaster).These
  persistent persecutions have overall resulted in
  the ruling class Zoroastrian community which had
  much influence over the pre-Islamic era Persian
  empires to become one of the smallest religious
  minorities in the world.
• Persecution of Zoroastrians have mainly taken
  place in their own homeland Persia, modern day
  Iran.1 The history of persecution of
  Zoroastrians started from the Arab conquest of
  Persia and fall of the Sassanid Empire.

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Cathars, Albigensian Crusade

• In January 1208 the papal legate, Pierre de
  Castelnau was sent to meet the ruler of the area,
  Count Raymond VI of Toulouse. Known for
  excommunicating noblemen who protected the
  Cathars, Pierre de Castelnau excommunicated
  Raymond as an abettor of heresy. Castelnau was
  immediately murdered near Saint Gilles Abbey on
  his way back to Rome by a knight in the service
  of Count Raymond. As soon as he heard of the
  murder, the Pope ordered the legates to preach a
  Crusade against the Cathars. Having failed in his
  effort to peacefully demonstrate the perceived
  errors of Catharism, the Pope then called a
  formal crusade, appointing a series of leaders to
  head the assault. There followed twenty years of
  war against the Cathars and their allies in the
  Languedoc the Albigensian Crusade.
• The crusader army came under the command, both
  spiritual and military, of the papal legate
  Arnaud-Amaury, Abbot of Cîteaux. In the first
  significant engagement of the war, the town of
  Béziers was taken on 22 July 1209. Arnaud, the
  Cistercian abbot-commander is supposed to have
  been asked how to tell Cathar from Roman
  Catholic. His famous reply, recalled by a fellow
  Cistercian, was "Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus
  qui sunt eius." Kill them all, the Lord will
  recognise His own.2

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dEgmont et de Hornes
June 5, 1568
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St Bartholomew massacreAug 24, 1572
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Robert Cardinal Bellarmine (1542-1621)

• Bellarmine became the first Jesuit professor at
  the university of Louvain (in modern Belgium) in
  1569 and was ordained as a priest the following
  year.

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Galileo Galilei 15 February 1564 (1633) - 08
January 1642
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Giordano Bruno1548 - Feb. 17, 1600
Bruno had maintained that Moses was a great
magician. It was fiction that he spoke with god.
Jesus was a magician and a wretch. There was no
reason to wonder at his miracles because he,
Bruno, could perform even greater ones. Bruno was
said to have mocked the resurrection and the
virgin birth. He said there was no Hell and
no-one would suffer eternal punishment. There
was no distinction of persons in God, since this
would be imperfection. Prayer, relics, images
were all without efficacy. Monks were asses. No
religion pleased him. Asked - what religion do
you adhere to? Bruno quoted a line from Ariosto
"Enemy of every law and every faith" and let out
a great laugh.
seven years in prison
Campo dei Fiori
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Top ten martyrs
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Martyr tree
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Atheists

• Irreligious people in Iran are not recognized as
  citizens. While Jews, Christians and other
  minorities have the right to take part in
  university entrance exams and can become members
  of parliament or city councils, irreligious
  people are not granted even their basic rights.
  Most irreligious people, however, hide their
  beliefs and pretend to be Muslims.
  Non-believersatheistsunder Islam do not have
  "the right to life". Apostasy in Iran is
  punishable by death.1
• Among those imprisoned for atheism was Denis
  Diderot (17131784),
• Medieval beliefs that most closely approach
  strong atheism were probably held by some members
  of the pantheistic Brethren of the Free Spirit. A
  man called Löffler, who was burned in Bern in
  1375 for confessing adherence to this movement,
  is reported to have taunted his executioners that
  they would not have enough wood to burn "Chance,
  which rules the world.
• During the late Roman Empire, atheism a capital
  crime was a common legal prosecution against
  Christians by henotheists. Christians rejected
  the Roman gods, and henotheists rejected the
  exclusivity of Christian monotheism.
• On March 25, 1811, Percy Bysshe Shelley was
  expelled from Oxford University for not refusing
  authorship of the pamphlet The Necessity of
  Atheism

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Spatial /or Time scales!!!

• Afro-Brazilian Cultists
• Mandeans (60 k)
• Eglise Chr. Univ. (2 k)
• Antoinistes (200 k)
• Mormons (13 M)

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Competition

• Combative hostility toward competing faiths
  characterizes Brazil's fastest- growing
  Pentecostal group, the Universal Church of the
  Kingdom of God. Its authoritarian bishop, Edir
  Macedo de Bezerra, 45, began preaching in 1977 to
  a dozen curiosity seekers in a rented room above
  a funeral parlor today his flock is 2 million
  strong. The movement filled a 150,000-seat Rio
  stadium twice last year, opens one new church a
  week, and has added a 45 million Sao Paulo TV
  channel to its 14 radio stations.

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Culte antoiniste

• One of oldest is the Antoinist religion, founded
  by Louis Antoine at the end of the last century.
  The concept of disease is denied, just as is that
  of death (belief in the reincarnation) it is
  intelligence which creates suffering, it is only
  faith in and of itself which removes it, and not
  the intervention of health professionals.
• La Science Chrétienne, née aux États-Unis à la
  fin du XIXe siècle sous l'impulsion de Mary Baker
  Eddy (1821-1910), et l'Antoinisme, mis en place
  par Louis Antoine (1846-1912) au tout début du
  XXe siècle en Belgique, ont trois
  caractéristiques communes.
• http//culteantoiniste.com/index.html

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Père Antoine

• Un seul remède peut guérir l'humanité LA FOI
  c'est de la foi que naît l'amour

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Recent Religious Movements seed and soil
effects

• a. Kimbanguism -- Zaire, Angola (3 M)
• b. Dehima--Sub-Sahara (400 k)
• c. Sokka-Gakkai--Japan (10 M)
• d. Umbanda--Brazil
• e. Course in Miracles--U.S.A
• f. AAO--Germany, Austria, Switzerland
• g. Unification Church--United Kingdom
• h. Cargo Cults--Papua New Guinea

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Data ?

• International Data Base (IDB)
• see table 58 information on the population of
  103 nations worldwide.
• The surveys were carried out between 1960 and
  1992.
• It gives the number of adherents of 150
  religions,
• for about 2 billion people 1/3 of the present
  world population.
• World Christian Encyclopedia (WCE)
• 56 religions
• from 1900 till 2000 survey over a 5 year span
• forecast for 2025 and 2050.
• D. Barrett, G. Kurian, T. Johnson, World
  Christian Encyclopedia
• (2nd edition) (New York Oxford University
  Press, 2001)

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WCE-WCT
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BEL
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(No Transcript)
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(No Transcript)
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Religious Pie
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Top ten denominations in
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Top ten people in
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Least evangelized
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P. Distribution(s) F.

• Data
• Fits
• log-normal
• Weibull
• Gauss

Preferential attachment
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Zipf mode (WCE)
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Zipf mode (IDB)
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Slope of tail distribution
IDB

• Scale freenetwork

WCE
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Z
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Cults/Sects FR/Wld
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Progress 7 -1
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P. Distribution (time)
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Model
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Model
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Avrami Eq.

• g(t) is counting the fraction of adherents of a
  given religion,
• Vn is connected with the total world population,
  
• S is a scaling parameter to be determined
• k(t) t-h where h is a parameter to be
  deduced in each case, measuring the
  attachment-growth (or death) process

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Avrami solution

• h parameter

if growing

if decaying
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Evolution(s)
Avrami-Kolmogorov Eq. for crystal growth
Europhys. Lett.
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4 Asian cases
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4 Christians (1)
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4 Christians (2)
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4 growing cases
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Languages vs. Religions

• Quantity
• multilingual frequent
• variety
• dialects, slangs,
• Time scales
• long
• Grammar, Vocabulary
• Nucleation and growth
• deaths
• Applied fields rare

• Quantity
• polyreligious rare
• variety enormous, and yet !
• denominations, sects, cults
• Time scales
• varied (short)
• Rituals
• SOC, avalanches
• Constantine, Khazars, etc.
• deaths
• Applied fields very strong
• Inquisition,

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What else ?

• Other degrees of freedom Potts-like models
• Vector fields external fields endogeneous
  conditions
• Geographical, sociological, political, effects
• Correlated (or not) network assortativity
• With respect to parameters, weights,
• Memory, directionality, reciprocity
• Aging polytheism-monotheism-
• Feedback F-P. Eq., Langevin eq., with time
  delay
• Texts, Congregations,