Well, good. Maybe we are on the same sheet of music. Or in the same opera anyway.
May all your rocks cry out and your mountains clap their hands. ;-)
LOL, Brother Arlen! One does imagine that such consciousness as atoms (and their constituting particles) may possess (if any) would be of comparatively far lower order than the human. Still, those critturs do seem to "act" as if they "knew" how to "follow laws"...at least at the level of their own activity. I wouldn't rule out some type of consciousness there.... Though it sure might sound strange to say it, I don't think we can say we definitively know the answer to that yet.
A clear reference to the 7.3 earthquake in Alaska last spring. The rocks don't have much to say, but they make up for it in enthusiasm.