@Sunstone you are dead right, the Buddha taught this principle more than two millennia before Baha'u'llah.
Since the Bab and Baha'u'llah lived after the European Renaissance, Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment, their ministries took place at a time when the majority of educated Westerners were staunch advocates of the independent investigation of truth already. Secular Muslim theorists in Turkey were also trying to promote it in their efforts to liberalise the Ottoman Empire. As such, it wouldn't have been a very revolutionary idea at all for Baha'u'llah to preach, at least in the West (although it would have been in his own native Persia, certainly).
But to be a bit pedantic, the ancient Greeks arguably beat Siddhartha Gautama to the punch on this. Thales, in the 7th century BCE, was the first to probe the natural world and come up with assumptions not rooted in ancestral knowledge and inherited traditions. The Socratic philosophers followed in his wake with their systems.
Socrates himself was a vociferous advocate of free thought, unmoored from inherited dogmatism.
The Athenian assembly executed him in 399 BC (well compelled him to poison himself with hemlock, to be specific) because he had committed the crime of
asebeia: “
failing to acknowledge the gods that the city acknowledges” and “
introducing new deities”. Diopeithes’ decree went as follows:
"...Socrates commits a crime in not recognising the gods the state recognises, and introducing other, new divine powers instead. He also commits a crime by corrupting the young..."
In other words, he questioned the traditions of the elders and threatened the established, time-honoured consensus.
Jesus, can be added to the list as another advocate of this principle.
He didn't just "
blindly" read the Torah and
rely on Jewish scripture, tradition, other received wisdom, and authority. Rather, he encouraged people to depart from the outmoded way of thinking of their ancestors and a literal interpretation of scriptural precepts, and embrace "
a better way of thinking about and treating people":
Matthew 5:38 - 43
“You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.
“You have heard that it was said [to our ancestors], ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you"
Jesus instructed his audience to stop thinking in terms of the "
received wisdom" of their ancestors, as one scholar notes:
The Sermon on the Mount
Jesus was well aware that much of what he was going to say would be in fundamental contradiction to what the masses had been taught. He recognized that there would be a chasm, an incompatibility, between the prevailing orthodoxy (either popular, clerical, or both) that they had been raised in and that which he was advocating (Mt. 9:16, for example).
Indeed, he plainly told his audience that they already possessed the ability to make their own value judgments about his ministry, and that they shouldn't look for divine signs in the heavens to validate it:
Luke 12:57
“And why do you not judge for yourselves what is right?"
That is a literal Greek translation of this verse:
GRK Δια τι δε και αφ' εαυτων δεν κρινετε το δικαιον
This is not an appeal to authority or sacred writ but to common sense, conscience and rational judgement. One commentator, for instance, transliterates the meaning of this injunction as follows: "
Why, even without signs, do you not judge rightly of me and of my doctrine by the natural light of reason and of conscience?" (
J. R. Dummelow, op. cit., p. 755).
Professor John P. Meier, the esteemed American biblical scholar and historical Jesus researcher, explained in his book series,
The Marginal Jew how:
"...His teaching evinced a style and content that did not jibe with the views and practices of the major Jewish religious groups of his day...
By the time he died, Jesus had managed to make himself appear obnoxious, dangerous, or suspicious to everyone, from pious Pharisees through political high priests to an ever vigilant Pilate. One reason Jesus met a swift and brutal end is simple: he alienated so many individuals and groups in Palestine that, when the final clash came in Jerusalem in 30 AD, he had very few people, especially people of influence, on his side.
The political marginality of this poor layman from the Galilean countryside with disturbing doctrines and claims was because he was dangerously anti-establishment and lacked a proper base in the capital..."(Powell, 130-133)
But, in some ways, I think the biggest step forward made with this idea was in the middle ages, when scholastics like St. Albertus Magnus applied it to the emerging field of
empirical science (ancient Greek science hadn't been empirical).
In
De Mineralibus Saint Albertus Magnus (1206–1280), the teacher of Saint Thomas Aquinas and forefather of scholasticism, known as the "
Universal Doctor", wrote:-
The aim of natural science is not simply to accept the statements of others, but to investigate the causes that are at work in nature. In studying nature we have not to inquire how God the Creator may, as He freely wills, use His creatures to work miracles and thereby show forth His power: we have rather to inquire what Nature with its immanent causes can naturally bring to pass [i.e. according to the Creator's laws, mathematical order]
As the Stanford Encyclopedia explains about these medieval churchmen:
Scientific Method (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
During the medieval period, figures such as Albertus Magnus (1206–1280), Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), Robert Grosseteste (1175–1253), Roger Bacon (1214/1220–1292), William of Ockham (1287–1347), Andreas Vesalius (1514–1546), Giacomo Zabarella (1533–1589) all worked to clarify the kind of knowledge which could be obtained by observation and induction, the source of justification of induction, and the best rules for its application.[2] Many of their contributions we now think of as essential to science (see also Laudan 1968)...
During the Scientific Revolution these various strands of argument, experiment, and reason were forged into a dominant epistemic authority...The Book of Nature, according to the metaphor of Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) or Francis Bacon (1561–1626), was written in the language of mathematics, of geometry and number. This motivated an emphasis on mathematical description and mechanical explanation as important aspects of scientific method.
I really don't understand how any specific belief system could make a claim of intellectual ownership over this idea, least of all one originating in the mid-nineteenth century (no disrespect intended to Abdu'l-Baha). It seems a rather incredulous notion to me.
If we were to take the statement at face value, it is ignoring or apparently unaware that Thales, Socrates, the Buddha, Jesus, St. Albertus Magnus and many other great thinkers taught variations of this idea. The list would be very long indeed if I actually attempted to reference every thinker down the ages who has mooted or toyed with the principle.
