I reckon there's some of that happening - manipulation.
I think more so it's driven by desire and fear. Everyone wants a comfortable life; everyone wants to avoid pain; everyone wants to understand life; everyone wants a good afterlife (if such a thing exists). It's completely natural that some people would attempt to create a "working model" for life where you could get your needs met and avoid tragedy. That's religion... and philosophy.
We only have to go back a few hundred years. Imagine living in old England as one of the lower classes. You go to work at age 14, slave away in coal mines until you develop some hideous lung disease from inhaling dust, then die when you're 30. No palliation or pain relief - just gasp until you can gasp no longer. Your house has a dirt floor, no heating/cooling, no sh1tter, cruddy food. That was a normal life for the less fortunate - hell, from start to finish, and no hope of ever moving out of it.
And even for the wealthy back then, there was no medicine to speak of. If something happens, you're f'd. Or maybe there's a black plague or a natural disaster which renders everyone helpless (even those who pray). In the peak of the plague, 4000 people a week were dying in London alone. 'Bring out your dead!'.
But man's attempt to understand life is admirable, if misdirected. Well intentioned for the most part.
