No non-living thing has ever shown signs of consciousness according to any current definition of the term. You say that is not evidence. It is not evidence if it has never been put under observation. But it has been observed, billions of times. You and I observe it every day. If you wish to contradict this, tell me your evidence for any non- living entity displaying anything remotely resembling consciousness. This is the religion thing again, isn't it, Kevin. An outrageous assertion is made: there is a supernatural, all-knowing, all-seeing being. You tell me that the absence of any corroborated evidence for him is, er, not evidence. Well, yes it is, if we've looked for it and found that it isn't there, as I've done. I think the trouble here is that you're confusing evidence and conclusion. Now the issue of life on other planets is entirely different. Life on other planets has never been observed. But there are hundreds of billions of stars in the universe. We have got more and more evidence that many stars have planets. The likelihood that there is a planet, or indeed millions of planets, somewhere with conditions similar to those on earth is very high. Therefore the probability of the existence of life elsewhere in the universe is high. The existence of life somewhere else in the universe makes a good hypothesis, as it's testable and is predicated on evidence and reason. The existence of consciousness in non-living things does not even get to the starting block, rather like God. Of course, you may want to put the assertion beyond science. But until then the ball is in your court. If you think that non-living things can be conscious, let's see your evidence and hear your reasoning. Until then, your hypothesis is not only potentially null, it can't be a hypothesis at all.