Maybe.

*warning* layperson talking *warning*

Certainly you cannot have an infinite causal chain in the 'real' universe.  I think the problem is we don't know what existed before the big bang, and we might not ever know for sure, so it makes it tough to speculate about what the 'cause' of that event was.

Soon, someone will post here about some quantum thingy that might explain the initial reaction, but if you try to dig into what might have caused that initial quantum reaction, the most you'll get is a hypothesis that quantum events of that type are theoretically causeless and might reside outside of what we call time.  I've never heard of anything speculate as to *why* that might be the case, other than it seems to be a logical necessity to explain quantum behavior.

Edit:  The argument against the cosmological one is usually that there "must" be an infinite regress, but infinite regress is impossible therefore something must have broken that infinite regress.  A theist will say that event was a infinitely complex God that exists causelessly, the anti-theist will point out current science that says it is more likely an infinitely simple quantum event, or that we don't know, and that by assigning creation to a complex, conscious being you are not solving infinite regress you are actually just adding a layer of unlikely complexity by making a bald assertion.

That is math though, doesn't that break down when applied to a physical universe that does seem to be made up of individual, non-reducible pieces?  The example you gave seems to rest on our being able to conceptualize a smaller number than the number before, but what happens when you need a smaller unit of matter or energy to cause a reaction but there isn't anything smaller?  Doesn't a causal chain continue until you've hit the quantum level, then sort of evaporate/disperse/whatever?

Ok, thanks Bob.

I'd like to take issue with Bob's reply here - but I will gladly say as a preface two things:  a) my science comprehension generally turns out to be somewhat off, and b) ideologically, I take as a sort of given that a priori knowledge cannot, in principle, be literally contradicted by empirical observation.   It's been awhile since Kant for me but that is the sort of reasoning I am referring to - my knowledge that I exist cannot, for example, be empirically proved to be false.  Otherwise I would be unable to think it.  I will hope to avoid counterfactuals/alternate worlds theory here unless someone wants to specifically bring it up.

I was fortunate enough to meet and attend a lecture with Paul Davies at Hampshire College where I went to school, who actually offered the argument that the infinite-regress tendency is something we are more or less always led to, by the product of our tendency to break down reality further and further.  He did, however, speculate (this if I remember correctly) that an infinite regress of causes into the past is not possible.

I will run with this from the philosophical standpoint - that, in thinking about time in linear terms, as a phenomenon of existence, the idea that there can be an infinite regress of causes into the past is a paradox.  Plain and simple.  It is a paradox just as much as the idea that there is a single, causeless event or entity, from which 'causation' then springs forth.  The classical xeno's paradox (or is it socrates?) answer to the infinite-regress problem is, if there is an infinite regress of causes stretching on infinitely into the past (think about that carefully)....then how have we arrived at the present moment?

I am at this point in my thinking life content to say (largely thanks to drugs!  hehe!) that the best solution is indeed one that sees all time as now, here, one moment quantum experiencing.  Eastern thinkers like Krishnamurti offer us fascinating ideas here.  But in terms of rational/philosophical thought, it is difficult to 'solve' the paradox; indeed I don't know if any great thinker has done it?  I'd welcome suggested reading if anyone knows some good stuff on the subject.

Bob schools me on the brainy stuff. But I school him in taking the brainy stuff and putting it in the layman's lingo.

It is true we don't know what came before the big bang.

But if most with a rational brain can accept that a Tsunami or hurricane is not a thinking being, why would what came before the big bang be human?

What we see out there is not US, it is not human, it is not thinking. The universe does not resemble our human brain. It is merely OBJECTS bumping into each other like unthinking billiard balls on a pool table. We simply got lucky because of the random combo that happened.

Luminon, what is clear is that you really don't understand science all that well.

We don't assume what is random or not, we base our judgement of randomness on actual measurement - there are specific indicators of randomness.

You are the one making unjustified statements about things we cannot know or are contrary to current observation, with your talk of 'cycles' and rotation. There is clear evidence of open-ended processes which do not cycle in any sense. The accelerating expansion of our universe appears to be one. Atoms do not normally 'cycle', some progressively decay toward more stable states. There is some re-cycling, such as the matter expelled by supernova being incorporated in new stars, but much of it may become just cold dust or gas or lumps or rock. It certainly cannot go more than a generation or two, since the matter expelled from a super-nova is different from what went into the original star, and has less available energy.

Such re-cycling is not inevitable, and is not characteristic of 'everything', and usually has an element of progression toward the ultimate thermodynamic/entropic 'heat death'.

There is no real evidence of cycling in galaxies, they will just fade as they run out of available energy.

Quantum entanglement has little or no implications on the behaviour of 'stuff' at the macro scale.

Ok, then why don't we believe in a god since we cant assume anything, then Jesus surviving rigor mortis is as possible as me getting a blow job from Cindy Crawford.

OK, you have actually gone up in my estimation...

I have come across those ideas, and find them somewhat questionable. If they are looking for links between some proposed 'collective consciousness' and physical phenomena, random number generators are the least likely things to be affected and measurable, both because of their inherently 'noisy' signal, and their well-estblished insensitivity to external influences. It would make far more sense to set up something which is extremely sensitive to fields of various kinds, and isolate it as far as possible from local effects.

Looking for effects in inherently noisy signals is really leaving themselves wide open to false matches. The 9/11 'match' from the Global Consciousness Project made that apparent, when the only match they find to any degree preceded the event, which really makes no sense. If they are fishing around that widely for matches in a noisy signal, back and forth in time, they have a very high probability of finding some totally unrelated 'blip'. 

Similarly, the Earth's magnetic field is a far too crude and 'noisy' thing, dominated by movements of massive chunks of matter deep in the Earth, and enormous flows of changed particles and magnetic fields from the Sun - it can only logically be a signal that gets in the way of detecting any actual magnetic effects from our brains or other organs. The thinking seems entirely backward and unscientific to detect any such signal that they think may be there.

And the idea that the 'magnetic field' of the heart is likely to have some external effect is really stretching things way beyond breaking point. Brain 'waves' would make far more sense that the heart, which has only fairly crude reactions to our emotional state. Their selection of things to look at to find effects seems far more based on medieval, 'woo' thinking than serious scientific reasoning.

The most commonly used natural source of 'randomness' is a sample of a radioactive material, which seems to be as close to pure randomness as anything we know, and has passed every test so far, AFAIK.

Randomness measures are not relative, that would not be a good description, but they do have a degree of uncertainty, which is quantifiable. The longer we accumulate measurements from a given source, the more we can reduce the amount of non-randomness that might still be present but not detectable within the 'noise'.

The alternative approach to generating random numbers is by mathematical algorithms, known as pseudo-random sequence generators. These normally repeat after some longish sequence, which can be made as large as desired, limited by available resources. These can in principle, therefore, approximate 'ideal' randomness to any desired finite degree, and can be used to make comparisons with 'natural' sources.

 Another natural source of randomness is the thermal motion of molecules in gas and liquids.

Yea, ok. And thanks for stating the obvious. But nowhere in the universe will any amount of quantum theory justify the absurd.

The universe is an OBJECT not a thinking being, it does not have the properties of neurology much less brain matter. Just because all the material things in the universe are made up of atoms, including brains, doesn't make them even close to having the same capabilities.

The universe is a what, not a who. All quantum theory does is show us MATH, deep deep deep deep math. It does not make a frog turn into a prince.

The universe isn't even capable of the thought of an fly. It isn't capable of mitosis, it is not a giant strand of DNA. It is not living.

Anyone asserting or even implying the possibility  that the universe is living is to me, in the same boat as a Christian or Jew or Muslim. I like you Luminon, I do, but if you are going to make those types of claims there are those here that are going to kick your claims around no differently than we would any other person.

And so what? The "activity" of a neuron is not the same as the "activity" of a super nova, or gravitational pull of stars, or black holes. The atoms in our bodies have motion and stars and galaxies have motion, YEA AND SO WHAT.

They are still not the same thing and there is nothing similar about these "activities" other than motion. They have different properties and do different things and are at different scales. Equating these as having "similar" activities is like saying that peanut butter and squid are the same thing.

And there is definitely interaction between the sun and planets. It's both electromagnetic and gravitational interaction. The sun produces electric field that envelopes all solar system and planets moving in it with their magnetic fields induce enormous amounts of energy. Comets that move even faster all across the solar system don't just produce energy, they glow by the induced aurora borealis.
And so on. In the electric universe theory, all suns in galaxy are intensely connected together by electric fields and exchange energy so much, that there's an idea that they're externally powered. And it's a fact that galactic core influences the solar activity.

I don't think that electric universe theory is completely correct, for example it tries to leave out my favorite dark matter, but there are important points to be considered.

OK. Got me there.

The difference is that the ratio between successive terms in the harmonic series approaches unity as the number of terms approaches infinity, even though, as you say, each term is indeed smaller than the preceding one.

That is why I should have modified my statement, to make clear that the ratio must always be less than some specified ratio of finite integers, or equivalently, a finite length decimal fraction. I have done this in more recent references to this idea. (Before I read your post - I did realize this possibility) .