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Locke was saying Jack had to take a leap of faith to press the button. No, that's wasn't the leap of faith. The leap of faith would have been to let the timer run out. They already knew what happened when the button got pressed. It had been done a million times before.

Sure, but what happens when you press the button isn't the question. It's what happens when you don't press the button.

There is a great penalty for pressing the button- you are pressed into a life of psychological torture and dependence on a feeble code being input into a computer. So the question of faith is whether the penalty for pressing the button is worth it. If the world's gonna end, then the penalty is worth it, obviously. If nothing happens (or the place implodes), then it isn't.

Now let's look at it logically. There is NO evidence to support that the world would end if the button weren't pushed. The only thing to support this idea is hearsay by an unreliable witness, who presumably had the same evidence that we do: the video. The video does not tell us what happens, only that we must keep pressing the button.

And what do we know about the island? It was a think tank for exploring various sciences. Psychological exploration certainly seems within the scope of what they would have been doing on the island. Global extension- doesn't seem near as likely.

The evidence points toward the button pushing being a psychological experiment, not a global catastrophy. From that perspective, I would say it is Locke who is acting on faith. Or at least more faith. Jack's position seems to be backed by some faith and a lot of logic. Of course it IS a TV show and it seems the writers are determined to get Jack some faith, but that's beside the point!

I understand your point that they know what happens when they push the button, so it isn't a lack of faith. However, they'd only ever do so if they believed (by faith) that the consequences were drastic enough.

Truth be told, I might have pushed the button the first time, just to buy some time for investigation. But I sure wouldn't stick around and enlave my life to it.