But I don't see how someone can believe something that was written by man to be the Word of God and the absolute truth with no scrutiny or questioning of it.
The universal nature of truth demands the negation of statements such as, "if it's Gods truth, then it cannot be mans truth", and "if it's mans truth, then it cannot be Gods truth." Truth is not determined by its source (see Genetic Fallacy). You yourself believe that what you say in your post should be accepted as absolutely true. However, truth is exclusive in the sense that if the Christian account of creation is true, then all nonChristian accounts are false. If 2+2=4, then all non-4 answers to the 2+2 question is false.
On the issue of the fossil record, Stephen Jay Gould, the famous paleontologist from Harvard who himself was no Christian pointed out 2 significant aspects of the fossil record:
"The history of most fossil species includes two features particularly inconsistent with gradualism:
(1) Stasis. Most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappear; morphological change is usually limited and directionless.
(2) Sudden appearance. In any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and 'fully formed.'"
When anyone uses the term "evolution", it's important to make the distinction of the two types of evolution. Microevolution describes small changes within a species that "exhibit no directional change." Finches observed by Darwin had small morphological changes in their beaks, but no Finch was observed to change into a dog. Microevolution is a universally accepted fact by both Christians and nonChristians. However, macroevolution, the idea that enough small changes of microevolution can produce one species from an entirely different species, is the dividing line between a theistic worldview (which includes not only Christianity, but Judaism and Islam) and all nontheistic worldviews since each believe that man was created "fully formed" by the hand of God.
But even if there are similarities in different species, it does not prove that each had a common ancestor. Similarities in species may prove a common Creator, rather than a common ancestor.