How literally should we take the Qur'an ?

[R00tKiT]

Checking.... yale.edu seems legit:

https://teachersinstitute.yale.edu/curri....11.x.html

""
Thales the Milesian (639-544 B.C.), was one of the Seven Sages of Miletus. He was fond of “physis,” the Greek word meaning nature. He was a self-educated man who had learned a great deal by traveling. He was a wealthy man, as most studiers of science were, with a very high social standing. Because of this high social standing he collected many disciples. What is today called science was born over two thousand years ago in this Ionian colony with this Ionian descendent. Thales questioned the real meaning of things he saw in his world and he had a great desire to go beyond the facts and try to find out the reasons for their existence.

One of Thales’ contributions was based upon his observation that water was the most abundant material on the Earth and all plants and animals needed it for life. He postulated that life originated from water and that everything died when deprived of it. This concept, although based on reason, still had a magic aura about itself since Thales did not attempt to explain how or why the birth and death actually occurred.
[...]
A student of Thales, Anaximander of Miletus (611-547), helped to free Thales’ concept from magic and helped the elevation of science into pure reason
""

And then it went downhill.
But the notion is there.

Emphasis on 'went downhill'. Sure, I grant you that some ancient greek guy wrote somewhere that life originated from water (he knows no one will bat an eye if he's proven wrong). But we're talking here about someone who claimed he got revelation from God, the stakes are pretty high I would say. How would the prophet tell fact from fiction when copying stuff from the ancient greeks ? 

The central question : Why didn't the Islamic prophet copy the part where it went downhill ? I mean, you're clearly trying to chalk up some Qur'anic verses to plagiarism from greek sources, but curiously you only find the part that turned out to be true in the Qur'an, where is the other, larger part of failed scientific claims like the Earth floating on water, in the Qur'an ??? or the theory of the four classical elements ??

If I were to make up some purportedly divine book, I'll never make any statement about the Earth, or water, or the sky, or anything similar. There are probably billions of conflicting statements about the workings of nature that were made in history, and the prophet just seems to pick the right ones.