See with Your Own Eyes

One of the practical teachings the Baha'i Faith emphasizes is that every person must seek religious truth independently. Belief is not to be inherited unexamined, taken on the word of clergy, or held out of loyalty to one's people; each individual is charged to look for themselves with their own reason and conscience. Baha'i writings single out blind imitation of ancestral belief, in Islamic vocabulary, taqlid, as a principal source of prejudice and of the long quarrels between religions, since it locks each generation into the last one's antagonisms.

The proposed cure is honest, first-hand investigation: because truth is one, sincere seekers are expected to converge on it rather than diverge. Baha'u'llah counsels the believer to "see with thine own eyes and not through the eyes of others." The principle helps explain two features of the faith: its abolition of a professional clergy, and its insistence that true religion and reasoned inquiry, including science, cannot ultimately conflict.