No religion is superior. All have their sense, their purpose; all have their nonsense and tendencies for abuse and misuse. Just like you and I. Most of us Africans are hybrid religious believers anyway. A mix of traditional African and maybe some Abrahamic religion. So before you crucify any “dissenting religious views” first find out how your ancestors made sense of the world. If you could meet your ancestor from 1822 or 1622 he or she would impart lots of lost knowledge and wisdom I’m sure. And some will be nonsense, abusive and revoltingly backward.
In light of Science, democracy, education, imported religion and other vehicles of change we now know how some beliefs and practises were revoltingly backward. Every religion has their demons and some more than most have kept them hidden well. Galileo Galilei was once put under house-arrest by the Catholic Church for suggesting that the earth went around the sun and not the other way. Today’s knowledge is tomorrow’s ignorance. What we know is limited, but what we believe is unlimited. We should be able to refine our beliefs whenever presented with new information, evidence, criticism etc.
No religion is superior to another. We should be able to criticize religions as much as we see fit. In the same vein, what is good (about religion) is good and should be made evident. Personally, I prefer my customized recipe of religious beliefs. A bit of servant leadership from Jesus Christ. Pursuit of enlightenment from Gautama Buddha. Unity out of duality or “multiplicity” from Advaita verdanta and the Hermetics. Ritual graduation from traditional African culture and so on. Plus philosophies from the stoics, warrior-poets. And more to come from sources I have yet to encounter.
Everybody has their own version of God when it comes down to it. If we could communicate telepathically, people of the same religion would fight and argue a lot just because they have different versions of their same God. The imagination is God, that could be my poetic assertion. You are welcome to criticize it. I can explore the possibility, and find out from the exercise if I have a reason to be serious or if my assertion is a parody or a mockery. Whatever is the case, I’m sure I will find a religious text that backs me up. That is the beauty of religion. Some order, some direction amidst the chaos and confusion of beliefs. No religion is superior; they are just different flavours of the same delicacy. You are free to make your own recipe as you see fit.
Unreliable Narrator 