[rattlsnak]

this is a great explantion:


The black and white symbolism is Faith(white) and Science (black). They must be in balance with each other. Too much science and you destroy God and eternal life in heaven. Too much faith and you never make progress and advance your soul. The argument on the beach by MIB and Jacob make way more sense when you think about it this way.

The island is the source of faith. Faith in God, heaven or whatever your belief is. Science (the black smoke) is always trying to disprove or destroy faith. The faith source of the island represents all religions. It’s carried by the wormholes that connect all over the globe to the island at it’s center (see those portals near the cork). If the light is extinguished then people would lose faith and no one would go on to eternity. Just eternal darkness. This goes exactly to what Widmore was saying about never seeing your loved ones again if the light goes out. As they said on the show: there is at least a little light (faith) in all of us. The Lost characters had to learn to trust each other (have faith in each other) (notice NO fighting or disagreements between them this episode. They were all on the same page). They were all flawed as Jacob said (re: no faith) and they were brought to the island to gain faith and become candidates to protect the island.

I think the skeletons in the cave were men of science that ventured to close to the source and were made into smoke monsters. The cycle of different smoke monsters and “Jacob” has been going on throughout all history. Dharma, the army, the viking “smart men” (the "Bad Guys") were all destroyed by the Others (crazy mom, Richard’s 1954 group, Ben’s lead Others: “the Good Guys”). They were the foot soldiers or pawns in the battle (or game) between Faith and Science. I would imagine that Smokie was on the side of the Army guys and Dharma when they were there as they would have been helping him with locating the light.

Some thoughts on Alt-World (or the Waiting Room). I think this can be explained by the quantum physics many worlds theory (so maybe it really could be explained by science). The idea is that there are parallel worlds existing in time and space with our own. So you have your life in this world. When you die your soul goes to the next world and you have another life. It’s almost the same as the previous one but little differences crop up (can explain Jack's son). This is progress in your soul. You continue to have these lives until your soul is finally ready to “move on”. So the Lost characters died at different times but some came to enlightenment in less worlds than others (hence Kate saying she had been waiting for Jack for a looong time. These people were all destined to be connected with each other forever. They may have had little changes here and there but no matter what world they are connected (this explains the flashbacks and all the weird cross over coincidences - these could very well have been flashes to different lives along the path to enlightenment). The Alt-World show we were seeing was from Jack’s time to awaken but since there is no real time anymore we also saw everyone else’s awakening simultaneously (so for example Kate’s awakening could have been many many parallel lives ago and her soul has been waiting in the Church since then for all the remaining Lost friends souls to arrive so they could all move on together). As MIB said “ they come, they fight, they destroy, they corrupt. It always ends the same”. Then Jacob says “it only ends once. Everything else is just progress”. This was The End.