bonocomet
Blue Crack Distributor
Me too!
Yeah, I totally get what you mean, you explained it very well.
I think the difference in perspectives with us is that while you guys "are not great believers," we're more "active non-believers." The reason I call myself agnostic is because I'm not so firmly entrenched in my beliefs that if presented with some sort of evidence of an afterlife, I'd still deny it. It would just take evidence to get me to believe. So while what happened on screen may have been real to the characters and was part of their experience, to me, it's akin to telling a very engrossing, compelling story, and then having it end by making the characters fall down into the hole and go into Wonderland, or having them end up at Santa's workshop in the North Pole. It didn't resonate with us, because according to our core beliefs, the afterlife where all of this happened to them doesn't exist, and so it wasn't real, as opposed to it happening in the real-world here-and-now, and so all of those good things didn't really happen to them. And as I mentioned, we wanted those things to happen for them SO much that when they weren't real (to us), it was crushing, and very, very disappointing.
All that said, I do realize that there's a disconnect in the way that we couldn't accept the ending with the afterlife because of our beliefs, and yet we were able to accept the premise of an island in the tropics that had polar bears and smoke monsters, and all that shit. Weird, I know.
Does that explain any better how it was for us? Like, I get the whole science vs faith thing, and I do have faith in some things - for example, personally, faith that when I'm in the midst of a bad situation, things will ultimately turn out okay, or that making one decision over another is best. But as far as religious faith or the belief in an afterlife, I have none at all, and that's why it didn't work for me, and why the last 10 minutes was so disappointing to me.
I get ya.
And I agree that the final 10 minutes put it pretty heavy handed on the faith side, so I took that as just part of the story. Again characters learning about both sides of the coin. I'm sure it has much to be attributed to the writer's own beliefs. But in all, a very satisfying 6 year run.