The historical fact is that the Middle East has never had any shortage of self-declared or declared-by-their-followers "prophets."

I think evolution is often a good thing. The God of Leviticus is not very reflected in Micah. The awfulness of endless sectarian battles was somewhat, temporarily, mitigated by the brilliant moment of the Western Enlightenment.

But human beings are pack animals and we do poorly in large and larger and largerest groups all vying for the magic word to control society.

One can argue, with much reasonableness, that our brains are wired to respond to hierarchy for transcendent as well as practical reasons, and every person has the right to interpret that as they will. But all scriptural religions/cults end up shrinking (the concept we call for convenience) God to fit their human purposes.