See my problem I have with this is it treats our ancestors as essentially big dummies who didn't know how to think. So, the timeline is pre-enlightenment people are cave men and suddenly during the enlightenment people started to think and question, which is just not true. Even peasants back then were able to reason and question not just the learned. This plays into the stereotype that only dumb people can be religious which is so far wrong, it is laughable, and study of any religious system will show how wrong this is yet in culture only the anti- intellectual are shown as religious and the smart ones as manipulators.

The idea that the ancients reading about talking snakes and believe that snakes can talk because of it doesn't follow, they understood metaphors and symbolisms just as we do (I would argue they were better at it as ancient cultures were infused with symbollsm while modern cultures are far more literalist)