Not in those exact words, you are right.
You've implied that God allowed them to write things that would later 'prove' to be untrue.
My original belief was that God "allowed them to write" a short symbolic story because to give a detailed scientific description to unschooled herders was a waste of valuable paper and they wouldn't understand it.
But since you've convinced me that Genesis must be read literally, and there's no way Genesis happened literally, then the only possible answer is that it was written by untrained herders because they were bored.