{"id":428,"date":"2006-02-06T14:50:08","date_gmt":"2006-02-06T21:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ourthoughts.ca\/2006\/02\/06\/television-as-a-religion\/"},"modified":"2006-02-06T14:51:54","modified_gmt":"2006-02-06T21:51:54","slug":"television-as-a-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ourthoughts.ca\/2006\/02\/06\/television-as-a-religion\/","title":{"rendered":"Television as a Religion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>What defines a religion? In my mind, there are no clean boundaries between different religions so creating a broad definition may not work. Is it more or less than:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Religions have a conception of a primary religious experience<\/li>\n<li>Religions also have scriptures or stories that are collectively understood and passed down in the form of text or stories<\/li>\n<li>Religions have shared rituals and traditions that are shared by all participants<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Can you stretch your conception of television culture to classify it as a religion? Maybe not in the sense that the folks doing the actual watching consider it a religion, but there certainly are some similarities.<\/p>\n<p>And on the anti-television side of things, how many of you, the fine readers of Our Thoughts, have <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lewrockwell.com\/westley\/westley17.html\">dropped TV completely<\/a>?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What defines a religion? In my mind, there are no clean boundaries between different religions so creating a broad definition &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ourthoughts.ca\/2006\/02\/06\/television-as-a-religion\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Television as a Religion<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Television as a Religion<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ourthoughts.ca\/2006\/02\/06\/television-as-a-religion\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Television as a Religion\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"What defines a religion? In my mind, there are no clean boundaries between different religions so creating a broad definition &hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.ourthoughts.ca\/2006\/02\/06\/television-as-a-religion\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Our Thoughts\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-02-06T21:50:08+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2006-02-06T21:51:54+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jeff Milner\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Jeff Milner\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.ourthoughts.ca\/2006\/02\/06\/television-as-a-religion\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.ourthoughts.ca\/2006\/02\/06\/television-as-a-religion\/\",\"name\":\"Television as a Religion\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.ourthoughts.ca\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2006-02-06T21:50:08+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2006-02-06T21:51:54+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.ourthoughts.ca\/#\/schema\/person\/025ff7ef99625765714bb2875aa800db\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.ourthoughts.ca\/2006\/02\/06\/television-as-a-religion\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.ourthoughts.ca\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.ourthoughts.ca\/\",\"name\":\"Our Thoughts\",\"description\":\"Thought-provoking commentary on life, politics, religion and social issues.\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.ourthoughts.ca\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.ourthoughts.ca\/#\/schema\/person\/025ff7ef99625765714bb2875aa800db\",\"name\":\"Jeff Milner\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.ourthoughts.ca\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/1875071dd98e71b97ad9f600d118a1e5?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/1875071dd98e71b97ad9f600d118a1e5?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Jeff Milner\"},\"description\":\"I'm a thirty-something year old guy from Southern Alberta. My family has been in the church since 4 February 1844. I'm disillusioned and \\\"less-active\\\" since 2002.\",\"sameAs\":[\"http:\/\/jeffmilner.com\"],\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.ourthoughts.ca\/author\/jeff-milner\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Television as a Religion","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.ourthoughts.ca\/2006\/02\/06\/television-as-a-religion\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Television as a Religion","og_description":"What defines a religion? 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