The very fact that history shows that humanity seeks to explain unknown phenomena by invoking 'God' is an interesting observation in itself. Why would we do that?
It must have been some comfort to ancient people who had no idea of the actual causes of such things to think that earthquakes, diseases, etc. rather than being explainable occurrences were being caused by a being or beings of some kind. Once these beings have been thought up, the assumption is made that their motives are roughly the same as our own. Why? Probably because these people wouldn't have been able to conceive of someone with a thought process totally alien to their own (not that we necessarily can today). Once one accepts that someone much like oneself is causing these problems, one can try to suck up to them, to avoid future difficulties. This can be done via sacrifices, fasting, or whatever.
It makes no sense to do so if it's just not true, does it?
This religion can also be used to direct the behaviour of the populace.
Live in an area where it's hot and food goes bad quickly, so food poisoning is a great risk? Say that the gods have decreed that eating those foods particularly prone to carrying bacteria (e.g. shellfish) is 'bad'.
Trying to maintin some kind of order? Say that the being has handed out a list of things you're not supposed to do.
I'm sure there are many more examples of 'sensible' instructions supposedly given out by one or other of the gods.
So why would humanity have evolved to blame some unknown being for the vagaries of real-world phenomena (apparently a false premise) when anyone who took a contrarion view should have learned more about the world that is true, and thereby benefitted from that learning and that attitude, and gained an evolutionary advantage. If it's not true, and a hindrance to learning truth about the world, surely natural and cultural selection would have eliminated it long ago?
1) If you've never known that way of thinking to begin with, why would you search for knowledge? Far easier to accept what your parents and theirs before them have said. There's also an aspect of 'the king's new clothes' about it.
2) Throughout history there have been people who famously came out and said what turned out to be correct, but who were punished for it, as it went against the norm. If you had the foresight to realise that the earth revolved around the sun, and Torquemada asked you about it, there's a fair chance you'd keep your mouth shut about your ideas and just go with the church's line of thinking.
3) There have always been people who can use the fact that one or other of the gods *ahem* 'spoke to them' as justification to do whatever they wanted -whether it was taking lands from godless savages or just trying to get votes - knowing full well that they could then say that anyone who disagreed with them was disagreeing with god.
.....Genesis is enough. Although the Book of Job has an interesting part that could indicate God is referring to dinosaurs and not an elephant (or hippo) and crocodile, both of which are often mentioned in Bible footnotes but the descriptions don't match either.
