1) Faraday’s rocket experiments with the freighter (where the rocket was observed at different times from the Island and the boat); and

2) Eloise’s careful mathematical calculations to determine the exact location of the Island in order to return the Oceanic Six. Some comment she made during that episode (sorry, working from memory here, and I may be wrong), seemed to suggest that she was trying to locate the Island in space AND time.

Yes, I’d originally thought the island sunk with the bomb but I think over the past few weeks there’s been a lot of evidence it didn’t.

For the record, I’m still strongly of the opinion that Jughead caused the island to sink to the bottom of the Pacific.

There’s no evidence that the island sunk at that time, and if anything, Roger’s comments to Ben in LAX would indicate that they left willingly and wished they hadn’t. That doesn’t sound like a man who was forced to evacuate in the hours before Jughead, or who escaped as the island was sinking.

I think the island sinks in 2007 – this season by an incident that hasn’t yet happened – resetting everything to 2004 and giving everyone memory of a life they didn’t actually lead before then (ie quirks like Jack not remembering getting his appendix out – has he never seen that scar before?), or that they wished they had led (and that perhaps Flocke and/or Jacob granted them as per his bargains with them).

Back to Widmore for a second – I hope we get a centric this season to finally tie all his pieces together.

People will tend to point out evidence that the island was in the same time as the outside world, such as Ben telling Jack the Red Sox won the World Series. But information could reach the island as well as anything else by being properly displaced in time by following the proper path under the proper conditions.

What this would mean is that the island’s being under the sea in the LA-X timeline may be a partial red herring. It made us think the detonation made made it that way, but it may simply be that island is and always was under the sea in 2004, which is why it is so hard to find. I say “partial” because the island’s being under the sea may be a clue to the fact that the events we have witnessed on the island did not happen in the time we previously thought. It may also be that there are different approaches to the island that will allow you to reach it, but not all of them will displace you by the same amount of time.

This would allow someone from, say, 1895 in the outside world to arrive in the same island time as someone from 2010 in the outside world, provided they took different paths and the 2010 person’s displacement was 115 years great than the 1895 person’s. This would also allow for Locke’s and Ben’s time travel when they left the island after turning the wheel. I don’t remember Ben’s specifics, but Locke ended up in what to him was 3 years in the future. This may have been due to his leaving by a differnt path than the one by which he entered.

Weren’t they aware that Dharmaville is now sitting at the bottom of the sea?

I bet not. Roger was a peon who probably didn’t have access to much information. DHARMA was very secretive about island activities. I bet they would have controled the information going in and out.

Which makes me wonder again what really happened to the Island in the LA X timeline. One would think that if a major event happened there that destroyed the Dharma research colony (something akin to The Incident), it would have been known to people who were there at some point in the past. Roger had at least one friend in Dharmaville (Horace), so his lack of knowledge of the colony’s destruction is odd.

And the fact that Ben and Roger WERE living in Dharmaville sometime during Ben’s childhood means that the colony was active at least during the early 70s. Ethan’s appearance in the LA X timeline in an earlier episode also suggests that his mother, Amy, and possibly Horace, also abandoned Dharmavile before it was destroyed. The question that remains is whether they left Dharmaville because of the impending destruction, or if they did so simply of their own accord.

Wayne, so you think Ben’s comments to his dad might reflect a butterfly effect from the lack of a 1954 appearance by the six?

Not necessarily, but it’s possible. I put that out as one example of the many possibilities that all the jumping around in time (or lack thereof) could create. But it’s also possible that what we’re seeing in the LA-X reality stems from something not directly or at all related to time travel. In any case, I think you’re right that LA-X is not the result of 1974-1977 time-traveler activities.

Maybe both Satan and Yahweh die in the end, a metaphor for the death of religion. Our heroes in the end are the humans not the gods, Lost-as-humanism.