Oh! What a Theory!

Last week I read a really interesting book called "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" by one Julian Joyce. It reminded me of reading "Ages in Chaos" by Emmanuel Velikovski when I was a teenager.
The main premise of the book is that human consciousness only developed a few thousand years ago, and before that the human mind was split in two, with the left portion of the brain taking orders from the right portion of the brain without realizing that the right side was really part of the same entity. Joyce claims humans interpreted the "commands" of the right temporal lobe as the voice of gods, and thus the supernatural and religion were born. Outrageous right? Of course it is, but it's not insane...and that's what makes it a good idea. That's what makes it an original idea.
That being said, I can't say I buy the theory. I love the idea of it, but there just wasn't enough...irrefutable data to make me shout "Eureka!" and jump on the band wagon. I don't think his "evidence" was concrete enough, nor were his arguments in favor of his idea all that compelling. Too much of what he discussed was conjecture, based largely on interpretations that cannot be proved correct or wrong with our present resources.It could be true, but how could you prove it? There is simply no way of knowing (unless more data comes to light) but it did get me thinking about a lot of strange things, which I will probably write about in the weeks to come. But in this post I wanted to focus on his the nature of his idea as a whole (as a single entity). I wanted to emphasize the fact that I really do like it despite the fact that I don't really buy it.
His theory is interesting, and a good one (in a theoretical "what-if" sense, not a practical test-worthy one) to me not because he is right necessarily, but because he is asking questions and positing solutions to things that perhaps only a handful of people on the planet have ever even bothered to ask. He is (or was, he died in 1993 I think) thinking fully and excitedly "outside the box", and provides a new idea crazy enough to be true, true enough to be possible, and possible enough to stoke the fires of my imagination. Now that's what you call a theory!