I'm new to this forum so please be gentle. Being new, I'm not sure if this has been posted in the past, but thought I would throw it out for discussion.
I think MiB is actually a representation of GoodGod and Jacob is BadDevil.
In true Lost fashion, I think this is how they will spin the final episodes to leave everyone with that kick in the stomach, ah-ha moment.
There are a few things I feel point to this and alot of it is the little nuances of how the MibSmokey behaves, things that may point to MiB being GoodGod:
-Ben had to be 'Judged' by smokey/the MiB.
-Having Richard over his shoulder and telling everyone how he was 'disappointed' in them sounds like something God/Jesus would say to a bunch of sinners.
-One thing we dont know is that if the smoke monster actually 'kills' its victims or releases them to their parallel life, i.e. their own flash-sideways, also the people he kills are all either deemed evil, Ecco, or work directly for Jacob, at least to the best of my memory.
-The only reason we would think the MiB is evil is becasue that is what Jacob has everyone else on the island believing and who better to blind one's judgement than the Devil himself...
-It seems to me that nothing but good things come from the flash-sideways, Lock makes peace with his disability, Jack reconciles with his son, more to come i'm sure. It seems that Jacob prevented all those things from happening by bringing the Losties to the island.
-Last but not least, and you'll need to sit down for this, the MiB could be Jesus himself. We dont know how long they've been on the island but from the looks of the statue you could make an arguement that they have been there since the time of Jesus' death. Maybe thats why he states that he wants to return, i.e. rapture... He did say that at one time he was a man just like Sawyer and had all the attribes of a human. The only thing that would detract from this is that it would be really hard to explain all this in the time left in the series.
-Maybe infected means "Saved"...
There are some instances, other than the classic symbols of good and evil, i.e. white/black, lairs in the sky and in a cave, etc... That would point to Jacob being good and MiB being evil but the more I take the alternate POV the more i'm convinced the MiB will end up representing good.
Of course all this is theory and I would love to have a discussion about it or someone tell me something I've missed that negates all of this.
Thanks for your time and consideration,
-Jeremy