Trying to explain the universe around us by anthropomorphizing natural phenomena? I’m not so sure. It could be seen as useful in the sense of philosophical exploration.
Yeah. A lot of religions’ explanations for things are only wrong in the sense that Newton’s Laws are wrong. Later physicists made drastic improvements. Einstein’s equations are strictly more correct, and don’t fail in the situations where Newton’s equations fail (near the speed of light).
But Newton’s work was a way to start understanding, and a set of ideas for Einstein to start from. We don’t despise Newton for those failures, we celebrate the incremental progress.
Lots of religion’s efforts to explain the world act like that, just from before we even had scientic methods.
Edit; And to be clear, I still have no respect for the charred remains of any hard-line Newton fans who attempt space travel without applying newer equations.