Thread: Is Origin of the species useful?

I'll just state my question first, then I will explain what I mean. Being that Darwin wrote Origin of the Species 150 years ago, is the book still useful? I am considering reading it. I could order it online from Amazon for $5, but I want to know if it might be a waste of time since we have had all the time since then to better explore evolution. Also, my interest stems from passive curiosity about both Darwin and evolution. I am not planning on taking a full plunge into biology. I would just like to not get a load of erroneous information and wasted time. Unfortunately Google searches like "Darwin's mistakes" and "Origin of the Species errors" yield a great amount of religious reasoning which I am not interested in. I want to stay very clear of religious discussion on this.

It's useful as an historical piece. It's also useful as an insight into the workings of science, the gathering of evidence and how to build an effective arugument from that evidence. If you want to learn about natural selection I would recommend reading Darwin only after reading modern textbooks on the subject. It's not a good book to learn the subject from, especially for a novice. It's 150 years old and very, very out of date. With the exception of the fascinating history of the subject, I always say forget about Darwin completely. He doesn't have much relevance to the science of today.

There's been a glut of easy to read, popular science type books on evolution printed over the recent years, all of which would be far better introductions to the subject. For example, "Why Evolution is True" by Jerry Coyne, "The Greatest Show on Earth" by Richard Dawkins" or "Endless Forms Most Beautiful" by Sean B Carroll, to name but a few. Either those or a formal text book would be best.