Yeah, it was very clearly written by people who didn't know that much about how the world worked but did know that they could trick others into believing they were experts. And in the very first story, they added a warning to try to prevent others from figuring out things and proving them wrong: the original sin was eating from the tree of knowledge.

How that doesn't scream, "Stay ignorant so I can continue to control you!" to everyone who reads it and isn't a child who still trusts everything, I can't understand.

It could have just said: Earth is round or in the past there were huge animals who got killed by me. Or anything we would later discover it's true.