Is it dumb to base my beliefs on a man's book about events I never saw?

If you believe this you must toss out the majority of all your history books as well -- only idiots make this illogical statement because they fail to think past the only agenda they have when they make it. To not apply it equally across the board makes you a hypocrite to the worst degree.

If one person wrote a book about an event no one else saw, then your skepticism of that event would be justified. If 40 people wrote a collaborative book from different parts of the world over a period of thousands of years without talking to each other, and what resulted was cohesive and had exact times and events and people and witnesses and outside verifications besides the authors - then you should at the very least look a little deeper. Only a fool would throw it out as a fake.

I think at some point you have to try and develop a constructive cynicism of historical facts and things that you haven't experienced for yourself. I say constructive cynicism meaning that you have to be able to be skeptical and assume that whatever someone writes is almost always going to be subjective to a certain degree, no matter how hard they tried to make it purely objective.

even scientific articles aren't 100% objective when doing research. 100% objectivity would require only stating facts, instead of generalizations, etc. Until we have 100% of the information, true objectivity is impossible since we will have to make generalizations and assumptions. (for instance, your scale tells you that you weigh 100 lbs, but in fact you might weigh exactly 100.023945867 lbs. We say 100 pounds, because that's about as accurate as we can guess given the measuring device available at the time, etc. so it's not 100% true, its just as close as we can get to the truth given the information and methods we have available)

Considering numerous opportunities throughout human history, amazingly Mankind has not yet succeeded in self-annihilation…seems to speak louder than all the scientific theories that attempt to disprove the existence of a loving God who, despite our screwing-up of His creation, is nonetheless redeeming it. He has made the way for your sins to be forgiven and become part of His restoration. Why not confess your sins to Him and ask His forgiveness, He will! Then turn from them proving your repentance is real. Trust Jesus took the punishment your sins deserved, on His cross (aka “believing in Jesus”). I have done this, so can you.

So then, each of us will give an account of them self to God. Romans 14:12

There's a different standard we apply to the importance of each man. Christians say we MUST believe in Jesus as our savior or we will suffer in eternal torment. The same standard doesn't apply to your belief in the existence of Charles Darwin. You can doubt the existence of Darwin or even details about him - that doesn't bother me at all. And clearly you won't suffer eternally for doubting anything about him. See? Major difference.

When you're basically held at a proverbial gunpoint to believe in something, you begin to logically think about it. In effect, the threat and ultimatum of believing in Jesus adds to the dogma's incredulity.

The cool thing about logic is that it's consistent, and given the same premises, you'll be able to re-derive the same theories, facts, etc. that people did thousands of years ago, or yesterday; it doesn't matter.

No one said necessarily that Darwin is going to save our souls, or that we have to believe in him...logic (and experiments done by other people) dictate that stronger genes will, over time, outlast weaker genes, and that certain individuals within a species will generally be better able to survive over time. Try that with a burning animal on a mountain (whether your god is named God or Baal)...

The thing is Homer... what Charlie wrote down was only a beginning.

ALL current medical research is in some way carried out based on knowledge he discovered.

Your Jesus on the other hand has done NOTHING for science or mankind either except cause a buncha wars and genocides.

See the subtle difference.

No?

Meh...

~

Well, I must confess... IT DOES take a blind leap of faith to base my beliefs on his Origin of the Species.

Two words: "Habeas Corpus"

I give up with the, "is this a trick question?" ok?