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    America Wants a God

    Today, we’re introducing “Believing,” a yearlong exploration from The Times on how we experience religion and spirituality now.Americans believe.Most people are wary of the government, the future and even each other, but they still believe in astonishing possibilities. Almost all Americans — 92 percent of adults — say they have a spiritual belief, in a god, human souls or spirits, an afterlife or something “beyond the natural world,” as we reported earlier this year.The country seems to be acknowledging this widespread spiritual hunger. America’s secularization is on pause, people have stopped leaving churches, and religion is taking a more prominent role in public life — in the White House, Silicon Valley, Hollywood and even at Harvard. It’s a major, generational shift. But what does this actually look like in people’s lives?I have spent the past year reporting “Believing,” a new project for The Times. This project is personal to me. I was raised a devout Mormon in Arkansas. I’ve left the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and I understand how wrestling with belief can define a life. I hoped to capture what that journey looked like for others, too — both inside and outside of religion. I interviewed hundreds of people, visited dozens of houses of worship and asked Times readers for their stories. More than 4,000 responded.In my reporting, I found that there are many reasons for this shift in American life. Researchers say the pandemic and the country’s limited social safety nets have inclined people to stick with (or even turn to) religion for support. But there is another reason, too: Many Americans are dissatisfied with the alternatives to religion. They feel an existential malaise, and they’re looking for help. People want stronger communities, more meaningful rituals and spaces to express their spirituality. They’re also longing to have richer, more nuanced conversations about belief.Unsatisfying alternativesIris LegendreOver the past few decades, around 40 million Americans left churches, and the number of people who say they have no religion grew to about 30 percent of the country.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Phoenix Springs: Computer Game as Philosophical Journey

    The writer of the game Phoenix Springs says it touches upon two questions at the heart of Buddhism: What is the nature of death, and what is the nature of perception?Reflecting on mankind’s long history with technology, the British philosopher John Gray makes a bracing assertion in his book “Straw Dogs”: “Technology is not something that humankind can control. It is an event that has befallen the world. Once a technology enters human life — whether it be fire, the wheel, the automobile, radio, television or the internet — it changes it in ways we can never fully understand.”It’s an observation brought to mind by the new point-and-click computer game Phoenix Springs, an eye-catching, thought-provoking exploration of the unintended consequences that follow a society-wide embrace of biohacking.Players fall into the role of Iris, a veteran reporter, as she sits on a train with a desert looming through a window. The opening seconds, and an arresting dissolve from the sun-flooded train to a shadowy apartment, sets the tone for what follows — a slippery exploration of memory, time and space grounded in Iris’s quest to uncover the mystery of what happened to her brother.Phoenix Springs, by Calligram Studio, offers a refreshing take on the point-and-click genre whose heyday was the 1980s and 1990s. Instead of amassing items that need to be deployed throughout the game, Iris collects information — names, ideas, phrases — which she must apply to her surroundings to try to make sense of them.The game’s writer and designer, Jigme Ozer, said he tried to avoid “the key before door problem” baked into too many point-and-click games — where the player picks up an object lying around an environment and then looks for where it can be used. That’s not how it works in real life, Ozer observed. “If you have a problem,” Ozer said, “it stays in your head before you go looking for the solution.”Iris’s problem is unveiled in those early moments on the train.Clicking on Iris causes a squarish white overlay to appear with the name Leo Dormer. The window disappears when you click the name, and hovering the cursor over Iris causes a small text box to appear with both of their names next to each other.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Tawang Is the India-China Battleground for Tibetan Buddhism

    The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. More