This is an interesting and important topic.
When the–shall I call them refugees?–created the Golden Calf, it was created according to their inclination, in the form they chose, of the material they chose; and after worshipping it, they decided that it must want them to have a feast.
What they created, in other words, was a metaphysics that suited them, which they made no effort to reconcile with reality. It was a fantasy, a bubble, a congenial universe that just happened to suit their fancy.
In my view, the doctrines of Darwinism and “death-ism” (soul=brain), and the materialism which underlie them, are likewise idolatrous, because they cater to the vanities and preferences of the people holding these views, and not because they are defensible empirically.
This universe plainly has rules, by which I mean repeatable and reliable correllations between cause and effect, between stimulus and reaction. Some of the connections are linear and some are systemic; but all are reliable. This applies not just to what is READILY observable, but to the distant, soft, faint forces like those of psi, and mediumship.
People don’t realize this, but throughout modern history there have been mediums who could not just repeat words supposedly whispered into their ears, but actually manifest entire spirits, who could talk. Now, people may be skeptical, but the simple reality is that those scientists who have undertaken to study the matter have nearly uniformly changed their minds (usually beginning as skeptics); and scientists today who reject these notions out of hand can be reliably assumed not to have attended any seances with credible mediums (self evidently there are many frauds).
True scientists are open to all evidence, and all justifiable conclusions flowing from that evidence. Proper skepticism is equidistance from both belief and rejection. It allows you to move intelligently.
Framing things in this way, one can readily see why idolatry is prohibited in the Ten Commandments.
Put simply: idolatry is on this definition necessarily delusion, and there are no benefits to delusion. If the task is ordering our behavior rationally in a rational universe, we must know the rules. This should be self evident, and axiomatic.