What is Life?

What life "is" is important to creationists because they want to claim that anything that can self-assemble from simple chemicals isn't life. It isn't very important to scientists because they're interested in both living and non-living chemicals.

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Life is like a Hot Wheels car. Sometimes it goes behind the couch and you can't find it.

There's a difference between "description" and "definition".

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"It appears that many of you turn to Hebrew to escape the English...." -- Joseppi

Certainly, a description of reality should include a description of life - but what does a description of life have to do with a definition of life? An artist can describe life without defining it. Why not a scientist?

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"It appears that many of you turn to Hebrew to escape the English...." -- Joseppi

You said that "part of science is to provide a description of reality". I'm asking what that has to do with a definition. My thought is that science can putter along quite nicely without a definition of life. Definitions, by definition, are vague. "Meaning" is necessarily subjective. It's possible to have a thousand different definitions of life. It isn't possible to agree on one.

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"It appears that many of you turn to Hebrew to escape the English...." -- Joseppi

The OP doesn't suggest that there "is" no definition of life. It says that there is no consensus on what that definition should be. Different definitions are used for different applications.What point are you trying to make by throwing yet another option into the non-consensus?

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"It appears that many of you turn to Hebrew to escape the English...." -- Joseppi

Where you're going wrong is in assuming that there's only one definition. The designer and owner may or may not have the same definition. The designer may define it as a house as soon as the drawings are complete. The owners may be showing people "their house" when it's just a foundation and a pile of lumber. The city government has its own definition - it's a house when it meets all of the building codes and becomes taxable.It's naive to pretend that one definition will work in all situations.

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"It appears that many of you turn to Hebrew to escape the English...." -- Joseppi

"Participate in the process of reproduction" is a poor choice of words. A participant is the subject of an action, not the object. A cheer isn't a participant in a baseball game; it's a product.The point you're trying to make is that a species must reproduce to be alive, even if individual organisms don't reproduce.If you want your One True Definition™ to be taken seriously, you'll have to be more precise with your language.

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"I'm Rory Bellows, I tell you! And I got a lot of corroborating evidence... over here... by the throttle!"

Single-celled organisms are doing quite well as they are. They're the major serious biological threat to mankind. Why would they change?Some of the first shelters were made of tree branches. Our houses today are considerably more complex, yet we still use a simple stick to hold up a flag. By your logic, a flagpole should have thousands of parts.

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"I'm Rory Bellows, I tell you! And I got a lot of corroborating evidence... over here... by the throttle!"

How could it not?

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"I'm Rory Bellows, I tell you! And I got a lot of corroborating evidence... over here... by the throttle!"