* Does Richard exist in 2004X? He owes his existence in the 1970s to Jacob's touch. If Jacob/the Island was destroyed, would he go poof? Would his agelessness simply cease, rendering him in his mid-50s in 2004X? Or would that gift linger on? I'll keep my eyes open for his appearance in that timeline.
* Some people are criticizing the heavy religious overtones of "Ab Aeterno", and criticizing the show for moving in that direction. One rejoinder is that religious questions have always been present on LOST. One can argue about how much they added to the show (the most overtly religious episode ever was also the worst, "Fire + Water"), but it's always been there.
However, I don't think that 6x9 indicated that the show was moving more heavily in that direction, not in the slightest. I think that it instead served to illustrate what we've seen hinted at throughout this season--the Man in Black attempts to appeal to/manipulate people with the forms and conventions with which they are most comfortable. By scanning Richard, the Monster was able to learn about Isabella and about Richard's faith. He used these two things to appeal to him, by attempting to paint Jacob as the devil.
It was the Man in Black who used the religious language to describe his conflict with Jacob, not the other way around. Jacob waives off the notion of hell, telling Richard that the wine represents what he [Richard] calls hell, then giving a number of alternate descriptions (malevolence, evil, darkness).
Jacob also denies having any sort of god-like powers: he cannot bring Isabella back from the dead, nor can he absolve Richard of his sins. Granted, eternal life is chock with religious undertones of its own, but Jacob denies godhood.
In fact, Jacob's philosophy flies in the face of many Judeo-Christian conventions, and is much more humanist. Jacob sneers at the notion that men will sin because it is in their nature to do so, instead idealistically believing that humans are inherently good, hence his efforts to prove the Man in Black wrong. Additionally, it seems clear that the evil he describes the Man in Black as wanting to spread is unique, as surely no one, lest of all the tortured souls of LOST, would describe the world they left behind as one in which evil and darkness were foreign forces.
If LOST had to be boiled down into an underlying religious philosophy, it would be one of new-age fusionism and humanism, with a dash of the old-time religions sprinkled in to keep their adherents comfortable. Of course, this has led both hard-core atheists and true believers to complain about what the show has to say on the matter. Please, general public, don't let LOST be hijacked into a work of fiction through which people fight their religious battles. I don't think the producers are pushing a comprehensive world view, just an engaging, centuries-sprawling puzzle that is so good it pushes people to get too involved.
* Some people believe there is a contradiction between Jacob's inability to bring Isabella back to Richard and his saving Dogen's son. I fail to see it, as it's never explicitly stated that Dogen Jr. kicked the bucket. It seems as if Jacob's intervention prevented that from happening, just as he may have done with Locke in "The Incident". From the Lostpedia transcript of "Sundown":
Every Friday I picked my son up from baseball. He was twelve. The accident was very bad. I survived. But my son...
[Dogen pauses]
And then, in the hospital, a man came to me. A man I had never met. And he told me that he could save my son's life, but I would have to come here... to this island... where I would have a new job. And I could never see my boy again.
The contrast with "I survived" could be interpreted as meaning that he had in fact died, but it also could mean that it was touch and go. Perhaps I'm parsing it too much, but this doesn't seem troublesome.
* Debates about whether Jacob or MiB are good or evil are Season 6's version of the "Whatever Happened, Happened" v. "We can change things!" debates of Season 5--splitting the fanbase into camps and triggering nasty message board exchanges.
I say it in every post, and I'll say it until I stop seeing the crazy notion that MiB might be the good guy: there's no way in hell. Jacob may well be less than a benevolent father figure, but the MiB commits at least one indisputably evil act per episode. In "LA X", he killed Bram and Jacob's bodyguards. In "The Substitute", he doesn't necessarily do anything evil, but it certainly seems as if he engaged in some cliffside stagecraft to try to win Sawyer's trust. In "Lighthouse", we see that he's been manipulating Claire for years. In "Sundown"...come on, I don't even have to spell that out. In "Dr. Linus", he urges Ben to murder Ilana. In "Recon", he slaps Claire around and admits to Kate that he had fabricated an enemy to turn her into what she is today. And in "Ab Aeterno", he leaves Richard to suffer physical torment by leaving him in his bondage, then inflicts incredibly cruel psychological torment by creating a manifestation of Isabella. He may not be "evil incarnate" as Dogen would have us believe, but he's not that far off.
Jacob is evil is the new "whatever happened, happened" v "you can change the past"--splitting fans into camps and leading to nasty message board exchanges...but seriously, you cannot possibly believe that MiB is good.
* I have claimed that the only interaction between Jacob and a Lostaway that in anyway suggests evil (at least that we're privy to) is Jacob and Sayid. Jacob distracted Sayid, allowing Nadia to be killed.
After "The Incident", I should have put the pieces together, but now we see that Jacob directly told Ilana to protect the candidates, and part of that obviously included bringing Sayid back to the Island against his will. Jacob really has it in for Sayid, and when he does come back he gets shot, dies, gets infected, kills his high priest...I sure hope Jake knows what he's doing.
