FallentoReason 2.0

[Jackalope]

My reasoning is thus: I don't understand how there's a "before time". Take the singularity, for example. If it created the universe then it must have been in motion, which requires time to mark its progression. However, we're led to believe that before the big bang event there was no time. This is one of those points where perhaps my understanding of the science fails me.

It's not surprising that your understanding of science would fail you here. What occurred before a short period after the big bang is highly speculative, and subject to much debate. Not all theories require a singularity - but if one did exist, it didn't "create" the universe, it WAS the universe, and changed into the universe as we know it.

Time is an elusive subject as well.

Second: Matter being born from nothing. I don't get how something can come from nothing. Therefore, to me, something outside of the laws of nature - an entity that we'll call god - is the only thing that can circumvent this rule. This entity, being outside of the laws of nature, doesn't have to follow the argument of infinite regression.

Google "Lawrence Krauss + Something for Nothing". He does a far better job of explaining what could have happened far better than I could.

Stephen Hawking has a lot to say on the topic, though much of what he says goes over my head. The rest goes WAY over my head.

I'm not gonna bag on you for being a deist or anything - but I do feel I need to point out that it appears that you're essentially positing arguments from ignorance/incredulity. Being ignorant is no sin - none of us really know at this point in time.

I don't find deism / pantheism to be any more persuasive than theism, but as far as god-belief goes, it's pretty harmless as far as I'm concerned.

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As I know it, existentialism has very much to do with life's (lack of) inherent meaning (according to Søren Kierkegaard's school of thought).

Well, I just looked it up on Wikipedia and I get a completely different thing:

Existentialism is the philosophical and cultural movement which holds that the starting point of philosophical thinking must be the experiences of the individual.

Read farther in the same article. That quote above is only a starting point, the implications are much greater.

Søren Kierkegaard, generally considered to be the first existentialist philosopher,[3][5][6] posited that it is the individual who is solely responsible for giving meaning to life and for living life passionately and sincerely ("authentically").[7][8]

I admit that I did say somewhere that Deism makes me feel a certain way, but never have I said that it therefore means it's the absolute truth, which I'm assuming is what an existentialist would(?) do.

There are, as far as I'm aware, no absolute truths to be found anywhere in existentialism.

Going back to your definition: isn't that nihilism? That life has no inherent meaning?

Well, that depends on who you ask. As I understand it, nihilism is a special case of existentialism (and there are many types of nihilism).

I would summarize them in layman's terms (and likely wrong) like this:

Existentialism: Life has no inherent meaning, other than what we give it personally.

Existential Nihilism: Life has no intrinsic or inherent meaning or value. I would go farther an say that under this philosophy any meaning that we personally assign to life is personal and illusionary.

There are other forms of nihilism (e.g. moral nihilism) which state that within their scope (i.e. morality) any meaning is artificial and constructed, rather than intrinsic or inherent.

As I can personally find no intrinsic, inherent source of meaning / morality / ethics, etc., I personally have a hard time arguing against it.

Under either school of thought, you can still find personal meaning for yourself - you just have to recognize that it's borne out of desire (yours or society's) rather than being some fundamental, intrinsic quality of existence.