Faith is blind?? Or??

This is one more question that has intrigued me quite a lot, always. But before I get started, I would like everyone to take note that I m not making even a remotest attempt to turn an atheist in to a theist.

What is faith? And can it be blind?

I remember a story of the son of a rishi. His mother used to give him flour mixed with water for milk. As a child, that was what he had tasted as milk. when he came to taste actual milk he refused to accept that as milk. So we can say he had blind faith on his mother. But then, did it do anything wrong to him???

When I plodded myself further on this, I thought that while obtaining every bit knowledge that I have till now (assuming safely and conveniently that I've obtained it in the first place :-) I have always relied on someone else's knowledge, as has everyone. Lets consider example of say Law of gravitation (this is not out of liking for physics, but that’s the only formula I recall right now) then... It says that gravitational force of attraction between two bodies is
F = G *( m1m2 )/ r2
Where:
m1,m2= masses of the 2 bodies
r =distance between them
G=Universal gravitation constant
Did we (or rather could we) bother to ensure that what the equation says is right? We simply accepted because Newton (God in physics) said that. Now you all don’t start shouting that he is a scientist and he has proven the law. All that I m saying is just that WE never verified it ourselves, just accepted it (read: showed blind faith in it, at least at that time) So now, this abominable "blind faith" has sneaked in to the most sacred things i.e. of learning science which historically has been considered a enemy of faith. Any kind of learning begins with a faith in knowledge that rests with your Teacher (this can be your mother, friend or a book etc) Hence rightly so; the Bhagwad Geeta says "shraddhavaan labhate dnyaanam". So it’s not possible for anyone to learn anything without having faith. Thus faith is central to our being. Even the atheist has faith in atheism. This too however, is blind as no atheist will ever be able to prove by any experiment that there is no God. Remember the principle in software engineering that not encountering bugs during testing does not prove their absence. If such is the case of human-made software (sigh!), we shouldn't be audacious enough and venture out to prove absence of GOD.

What all I have said above applies to common man and not some rocket scientist.(Did anyone notice? I've used this to sound fashionable. Ugh..how corny!! Never mind..) or for that matter any kind of scientist. So if you are THAT and you happen to read this post, please excuse me. I strongly believe that the people who proclaim to be belonging to the "andha-shradhha nirmoolan samiti" belong to the former category. They are the people who never waste any opportunity in making a big fuss of how Indians are stricken with blind faith and that this is sole cause of all the problems. Pray, which country claims to have never practiced any "blind-faith"?? Don’t we know enough about how Brits abhor the innocuous number 13?? Some high funda logic goes behind it...Huh??

So I ask, who gets to decide that someone's faith is blind? In my not-so-humble opinion it would be only that person who knows all the truth of this entire universe. And I haven’t come across many (?! actually none.) people who are of that stature. Some dim-witted jokers primarily do it for publicity. But then who cares???World is full of fools, we never have to search for them. On a more serious note to end with ;-) the world surely would have been a better place if the fools were not so sure of themselves.


P.S: Don’t blame me; I have always been a bit queer in the way I think.