Bible and Plagiarism

What does "proven to be false" mean?Is Goldfinger "proven to be false" because Fort Knox was never robbed? Did Ian Fleming "plagiarize" London street names from a city map?There are many things in the Bible that are "proven to be false" - the Flood is one glaring example. (It's interesting that the Flood story was, in fact, "borrowed" if not officially plagiarized.)I believe it is important not to "blindly follow" ANY source. But some of the ideas in the Bible may be worth following whether they were borrowed or not.You can plagiarize mere facts but can you really plagiarize ideas?

Of course. You collect observations of the stars (or whatever) and I take your notes and publish them as my own. That is pagiarism. I disagree. Plagiarism is stealing the expression of facts and/or ideas. You can't "own" an idea any more than you can own a fact. You can only own the way it is recorded.

You said in Message 15, "I believe it is important to not blindly follow a source proven to be false."We're talking about a source here - e.g. the Bible - not a specific statement made by a source. Many statements made by the Bible have been proven to be false - e.g. that the earth is flat. Does that mean that the entire source is "proven to be false"?

Yes, that's a good clarification.

Not really. A copyright protects the publisher, not the author; it protects the right to copy. When copying was expensive, it had some meaning; now, not so much.The only right an author and/or an inventor has is to choose who has the right to copy.

My point being that (in the past) the author was entirely at the mercy of the publisher who had the ability to do the copying. I don't think so. The cost of buying the rights to a book was (in the past) relatively small compared to the cost of typesetting, printing, etc. Today, the packaging costs more than the copying.