Many weeks later, Lost has ended, and I take back my words. This show sucked big time. Nothing. No answer at all. It's like watching a movie and then at the time, you don't get the answer to the big question that was asked at the start of the movie, only, "The answer doesn't matter." Really? If I wanted that, I'd read the book of revelations!

Man, all my years wasted on this show. I did watch Lost cos of the polar bear. That was creepy. I kept thnking, "What's a polar bear doing on a tropical island? What the hell is that black smoke? What the bloody hell is this island?" The little answers I got were meh. The main answers, I did not get. It proves the producers were just tossing all those polar bears and mysteries so we could keep coming back! God knows, if they didnt have polar bears and just made it about the characters, nobody would watch it.

Waste of space TV show.

I don’t know, it sounds like Lost is a show that supports complete ignorance. And there’s people that love that. Shouldn’t that be disturbing?

It's what disturbs me about the whole thing, Inha–I've seen so many people shut down even the discussions about this show with statements like "Spoilers: you'll die without getting all of the answers." And I can't help but shake my head; is this how they approach the mysteries of life and the world around us, or just fiction? Because to make an argument suggests that, yes, scientific inquiry, philosophic curiosity, and so on, are all in vain.

And strangely, from the outset, LOST seemed to have philosophic and scientific connections. While some religious symbols have been sprinkled about, there were also characters named Rousseau and Hume and Locke, Faraday and Hawking. Turns out those names were next to meaningless. There's no real philosophic depth here–just easy answers.

Which I find a bit disturbing even if I look at it from a religious stand-point. This is a show that suggests we should just have faith and not worry ourselves about the mysteries around us. Why? Because there's an afterlife–we see it. Showing us the afterlife in this way is not only a bit, I don't know, presumptuous, it also undermines the message of blind faith that the writers seemed to be fool-heartedly supporting.

"Wanna know more about the strange thing that just happened? Tune in next week to find out more."

So for me it comes down to bad writing. To be honest I felt that it went downhill at the end of season 3 and if it hadn't been for the illusion of looming answers I would've stopped watching the show at some point.

It's easy to start mystery story elements and make them seem interesting. The difficult part is finding a good resolve, which the writers of LOST were incapable of. Just imagine the LOST story as a 2-hour feature film. It would be a pretty bad and barely watchable SciFi flick.

It's a shame, really. Many individual episodes were very well done, but the way they ended the show leaves me with absolutely no desire to rewatch any of them.

Very true. But in this case, in terms of generalizations, it seems that if someone describes themselves as a rationalist or a person of faith, it indicates their philosophy on life, how it determines their actions and beliefs. And if that's the case, like you said, it's not something that should be argued. It's the "every person is a snowflake" deal, where every person follows a different philosophy that works for them.

But it sounds like Lost really pushes for one side completely. Telling your viewers that "everything is alright, don't even question a thing, things always work out in the end no matter what," is a terrible theme that sounds more like a dressing for very poor writing.

I'm more worried about the extrapolations of this. It's when people start creeping those philosophies or ideas into realms that probably shouldn't be put into place that it becomes a real issue. A controversial example would be people using their faith, their gut instinct, in understanding how the universe was formed and how organisms came about. Something that the scientific method has and is capable of elucidating and comes at odds with many people's different faith, and yet people will doggedly, to the very end, not change their faith in the face of overwhelming evidence and proof.

I don't know, it sounds like Lost is a show that supports complete ignorance. And there's people that love that. Shouldn't that be disturbing?

Yes, this is key. When Locke would say things like, "We have to push the button because we were MEANT to," and Jack pooh-poohed the idea, he was not being "a man of science." He was being a skeptic, which is not the same thing — even though most "men of science" are skeptics.

Locke proposed a hypothesis: we were meant to. A scientist would try to prove this true or false, and would withhold an opinion until the evidence had swayed him one way or the other. A scientist might also rule the hypothesis unfalsifiable, which would rule it not provable or disprovable by scientific inquiry.

When a skeptic says, "Come on! Bigfoot doesn't exist," that is NOT a scientific statement. It's a very reasonable statement.

What he means is, "People have searched for bigfoot for years, and no reliable evidence has turned up. Maybe we haven't DEFINITIVELY answered the question as to whether or not such a creature exists, but to do so, we'd have to do massive amounts of field work, and, frankly, since there's no real evidence in favor of bigfoot, I'm not going to waste my time on it. There are a lot of other hypotheses with more merit, and life is short."

That, to me, is an extremely sensible attitude, but it's not a scientific one. It's pragmatic. Science is often used (well) by pragmatists, but science isn't the same as pragmatism. For instance, if you're being chased by a tiger, it probably isn't pragmatic to do stop and conduct a scientific experiment.

"However, there really is an issue in rational decision-making versus personalized leaps of faith in making important decisions"

Yes, but I think the problem is that we try to generalize this debate too much, and it's not really generalizable. You need to take it important decision by important decision.

Let's say I HAVE to make decision X. And let's say I can't just choose not to make it. It's vital that I make it.

Okay, in the case of X, do I have a rational basis for making the decision? Or are there tests that I can do (and do I have time to do them) that may lead me to a rational basis for decision making?

IF that's the case, then I (being a rationalist), would say that of course we should go with the rational. But you really need the above qualifiers for the debate to even make sense.

When I discuss this with people, because it's linked to so many emotional buttons, the conversation gets muddled very quickly.

People bring up loved ones who have died or how we need to stop the Religious Right making political decisions for us… And those are important topics. Maybe they are more important than a metaphysical debate about faith verses reason, but they are NOT a metaphysical debate about faith verses reason.

When a show like LOST comes on and brings up "faith verses reason," and people "debate it," nine times out of ten, what they really do is vent.

One "debater" is really talking about how his asshole dad forced him to go to church as a kid; another is really talking about how his belief in God helped him get through that terrible time when he was so poor that he had to live on the streets.

Or people are angry (as I often am) about education — they are pissed off that our schools are bad at teaching reasoning skills.

I agree that there is, under all of this (worthwhile) emotion, an actual, practical topic about decision making. But the only way to get to it is via specifics: what is the SPECIFIC decision we are trying to make and what tools do we have to make it with?

I get the impression that people (and really the media in general) interpret "man/woman of science" to mean "jackass know-it-all," while more religious individuals are often portrayed as more "open" to various ideals. But isn't it really the reverse? Scientists openly admit to not knowing, which is why they run experiments (to find answers to questions). And the religious, particularly people of a specific faith, are often close-minded about the philosophies of others, or at least disregard those beliefs. There's exceptions, of course, but how many Christians also thinks that Buddha existed and is a spiritual figure?

And Marcus, I think you're right, the argument isn't logic versus faith, and as Phoebe said, much of that is semantics. However, there really is an issue in rational decision-making versus personalized leaps of faith in making important decisions, things that go beyond even "gut instincts" (I would even put gut instincts, based on one's fight-or-flight response that has been honed through generations upon generations of natural selection, on a higher plane than someone thinking there's a being in the sky sitting on a cloud).

It's worrisome that a show that so many people admire and watch may be giving support to those basing their decisions only on personal beliefs. It essentially gives credence to the parents not vaccinating their kids in the face of all of the evidence to do so because parents know it's bad. Or going to war based on some very flimsy evidence and a lot of personal assumptions.

I think Penny and Daniel were halfsies, not step-sibs, in both "universes."

What I really wanted to say was (1) that is hands down the best screencap of Locke, and I thought as much in the montage flashback of his Island life, and (2) I thought twice about Daniel saying his last name was Widmore too, but totally didn't notice Eloise's name had changed. Wasn't Penny Daniel's stepsister? Does that change anything about her existence in the sideways world? Not that it matters.