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Ok, pouring myself a "Tullamore Dew" and rolling up my sleeves...

My degree is in English and History but I love science (just didn't have the head for the math). I saw that same documentary on Ramses as you. We know that around 1200 b.c. there was a huge crisis in the ancient world and most major civilizations collapsed. The Egyptians were the only group to survive culturally intact and blamed the whole thing on a group of folk they called "The Sea People". The Greeks (then Myceneans) later blamed the Trojan War. Jews spoke of "The Exodus". Whatever happened - it was SERIOUS! The Greeks, for example, lost everything - literacy, farming, and became essentially a stone-age people who didn't recover for 500 years.

So yeah, Scientists tend to look to "rational" explanations for ancient historical events. that's what they do - they look to reason over faith. Is that odd? I don't think so. They're SCIENTISTS.

It works against them at times too: for centuries smug historians considered Homer's "Troy" as simply a myth. In the late 1800's German amateur archaeologist Heinrich Schleimann did something unthinkable: he followed the directions to Troy as put down in ancient writings and started digging where they said to. Guess what? He found TROY!

The 17th century represented a huge schism: the proto scientists of The Enlightenment were forced to confront the fact that in order to learn things about the real world they had to abandon theologies based on Aristotelian models and risk the wrath of a vairiety of theologicians, both Catholic and Protestant. Add to this nasty mix the fact that many of these early scientists were devoutly religious men and you have the makings of a major ulcer.

How did they deal with it? Compartmentalism.

You're a shrink - you know the word.

They set aside their faith and set aside their reason. They split the two. Faith was faith and reason is reason.

I think our next dialogue should be about "Postmodernism" itself. WHAT THE HELL IS IT?

Seriously, in 1920 everybody knew what "Modern" meant. In 1670 everybody knew what "Enlightenment" meant. In 178 "The Romantics" knew who they were too. Now we are all "PostModern" and we have no clue what that means! It's a great metaphor for the debased nature of our culture.

Personally, I think it's time to get rid of "Postmodernism". I propose we start at the beginning with a "New Enightenment". We should bring reason back to the arts and sciences.

But that's just me and I have had a glass of fine irish whiskey to serve as inspiration.

Oh by the way "Its Just a theory" doesn't work. Other "just" theories:

Theory of Microbial Infection
Theory of Gravity
Theory of General Relativity

Yeah, they're all "just" theories but they also happen to be true.