Because Mother wanted them to be there. She was non-specific God.

They gave you the answer plenty of times: Watership Down, Star Wars, Carrie, VALIS.

People have crippling emotional baggage because they were screwed up by their parents. This emotional baggage causes them to argue with each other about whether the world is science or magic, and whether things that happen have any meaning or are a coincidence. They may just be crazy, though.

Alias is the ultimate example of a show getting screwed by the network. Yes, even more than Firefly, because Firefly was at least martyred quickly.

Neither "Fire + Water" nor "Stranger in a Strange Land" were nonsense or filler.

A mindless, repetitive task which may or may not even mean anything in the long run.

Technically, the quarantine thing wasn't wrong. Since the Man in Black is part of the Source, and a bit of the Source is in every human being, he can infect peoples' souls.

Actually, the lost episodes were Faraday's and Miles's, which later became "Some Like It Hoth" and "The Variable". Lindelof said as much in an EW article.

They said as much in "Everybody Loves Hugo."

The season with the freighter was also cut short by the writer's strike, so I assume there were some axed plotlines because of the reduced number of episodes.

On the DVD, Lindelof himself said descending into the Hatch is a metaphor for descending into the untamed unconscious. And seeing how much those suckers on the beach project their own worst fears everywhere, it makes perfect sense why they'd be afraid of it. After all, look how many bad things are also in the Hatch:…

"We are the causes of our own suffering"

It's never really "explained", but from the context it's pretty obvious Walt was trying to warn Shannon about her impending death (hence the "don't make a sound" gesture) and inadvertently got her killed. Just another one of those predestination time loops like in season 5.

"It's all just really aggravating to me"

The brilliant thing about the show is that the characters themselves ARE the mythology. All the answers, and even the questions themselves, are just the product of their individual emotional baggage. It takes the mythic and makes it highly personal, so that the mysteries BECOME character stories.

"Despite Cuse and Lindelof saying that it was always the characters that mattered, that clearly had not been true for a while."

Plus, Sawyer's incoherent mumbling about "I'd leave you behind" when he has a fever is obviously supposed to be him remembering the flashbacks, but since they were axed we have absolutely no idea what's going on in his head.

My favorite thing about Made in Heaven is that, after an epic twenty-four minute soundscape sonically charting the band's years together, the absolute last thing you hear is Freddie Mercury shouting "Fab!"