How can fundamentalists not wake up?

[Esquilax]

Would any of that evidence not require me to have blind faith in the authority informing me of it?

College courses, particularly in fields dealing with factual reality like science, prize fact checking, falsification, and extensive referencing. That's part of the reason colleges have such stringent rules on citations; they want to know that you actually have looked into the topic yourself.

That's also why the reportage for science and math subjects require that you show your work. The two don't require faith of any kind, by design.