What is Life?

[Ferdi]

What is LIFE?
LIFE is but the name for an abstract. Life is not a thing; we cannot catch a life and put it in a bottle. Over the decades I’ve drawn some conclusions about Life on Planet Earth. I had our vets stop life, euthanize our ailing pets and for some years assist us during the lambing season to start the lives of our quad-lambs. I thus observed several times the abstract “life” disappearing, or entering/not entering in quads. When attending a normally dying person one can observe that one moment he/she is still there and a moment later the individual has departed from its body. Life, that abstract, can be “seen” to have gone. From those observations I concluded that “being alive” and “having life” are 2 different stages. This is a crucial point for such ongoing controversial issues as abortion, euthanasia, death-penalty, random killing the enemy in wars, etc.
I’ll try and prove my allegation. Consider a corpse, i.e. the dead body left behind by the departed individual: the body lost its “life”. The cells have lost their connection to “life”, but in fact the cells remain “alive” for a while, and do so to complete their in-coded function of decomposing that deserted body. Ipso-facto : “being alive” and “having life” are 2 different stages of the body’s cells. The fact is also evident from the now common medical practice of organ transplanting. Body-parts are removed from a fresh corpse, put on ice to keep them “alive” for transport, and then re-connected to “life” in the body of another individual. ”Being alive” is chemistry, i.e. science. While the abstract “life” is not of our dimensions, is beyond our comprehension. Science is diligently trying to create life; cell multiplication, chemistry, can be done in the laboratory. But I note that because life is an abstract, not of our dimensions, the instilling of new life is intrinsically beyond our ability.
The abortion issue hinges on the question: when does a human life start. Well-meaning teachers of mere “beliefs” promulgated the notion that life comes from a super-natural being or is passed-on by the mother. Fact is that at the moment of conception, an alive sperm meets an alive egg. Both cells are indeed “alive”, having just come from their respective male and female individuals; from bodies with “life”. Are the sperm and the egg already individuals with their own lives? I think not. Sperm and egg will remain “alive” long enough to unite, which is chemistry; can now be done in the laboratory. If they unite, a brand-new alive cell is formed, the zygote, with its own new, unique DNA, but it is not yet a new individual, it does not have its own life. The zygote is alive and is using the environment, the life of the mother. Sequentially, the life of the mother directs her DNA to move the developing cluster-of-new-cells to the uterus where the mother’s life provides the energy for the next 9 months to grow the foetus into a baby. Similar to a building code, the foetus’ own unique DNA in cooperation with that of the mother, guides the construction of the foetus, using the life of the mother’s body as the energy supply, drawing the building materials from the mother’s body and discharging its waste to the mother’s body. I have used the medical term “foetus” here to purposely make a clear distinction in the common usage of the incorrect but more endearing label “baby” prior to the eventual birth. The crucial point being: that prior to birth the foetus is an alive part of the mother, while a baby does not reach the “new individual” stage until “its own life” has entered at birth. The popular observation that the foetus’ movements before birth prove that the “baby” is alive, prove indeed that the foetus is alive-and-kicking and exercising its muscles. It is misleading to take that as proof that “life” had already entered the baby. Those movements, while independent of the will of the mother, are driven by the life of the mother; similar to the mother’s organs moving independently of her will.
Abortion is not murder; it does not kill an individual. Abortion stops the further growth of a foetus, a new human-being-under-construction. When a foetus is born pre-maturely, it may get LIFE and then it becomes a new born baby that may develop further in an incubator. Abortion is a very emotional issue. The natural, instinctive emotional attachment of a mother to her “baby” that has been growing in her for a number of months, gradually developing to become a very dear, intimate, precious and alive part of her for long months full of expectation. This has led naturally to a popular belief, fostered by well-meaning religious teachings, that abortion is murder. It is not. Abortion is stopping the development of an organisation of alive cells which had not yet reached the stage of sufficient completion to accept LIFE entering.
Now to the cardinal question of : What is LIFE ? My answer: Life is that abstract concept which is present in and drives any of the various individual creatures on planet earth for the duration of their existence on this planet. Life can be readily seen to end, to disappear, on Death. In contrast to the start of life, Birth, that has become a controversial issue. Both involve emotions which on death are dealt with by funeral ceremonies, by grave stones, mausoleums, even pyramids. At birth those emotions evolve from when the mother becomes aware of being pregnant, continue to a successful birth and happily thereafter, unless some event interferes.
That logically leads to such further questions as : Where does Life come from and logically return to, and: Why are we here at all ? Best leave those for a separate topic if wanted.

[Dalek Prime]

With or without parole?

[thedoc]

With or without parole?

Unsupervised probation. Just don't get caught.

Sorry, couldn't be bothered to read the whole thing.

[Dubious]

...something you receive without having ordered but have to keep on paying for with no "Return to Sender" address on it. If life is amazing it's ONLY because it exists and for no other reason.

[Impenitent]

With or without parole?

with

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jHs9_IWkGI

-Imp

[Hobbes' Choice]

A girl studying for here exams received a text from here Mum this week asking "What do you want from Life."
After composing a long-winded muse about the thoughts and aspirations for the future; her hopes and her dreams; even her longings - her Mum finally texted back apologising for predictive text with "What do you want from LIDL?"

Radio 4 "Friday Night Comedy Quiz".(paraphrase)

[Walker]

That you are alive is the only certainty. The rest of what you “know” is merely inference subject to probability. This totally explains why attachment to and defensiveness of uncertainty is an illogical and non-philosophical attitude unbefitting a tinker even though identifying diamonds and hearts requires a minimal attention to get along, yes um. The way to know you're alive is to pinch yourself and say, is this really happening? And if you feel nothing at the pinch tap your heels together, tap tap, and ask the same question.

[marjoram_blues]

A girl studying for here exams received a text from here Mum this week asking "What do you want from Life."
After composing a long-winded muse about the thoughts and aspirations for the future; her hopes and her dreams; even her longings - her Mum finally texted back apologising for predictive text with "What do you want from LIDL?"

Radio 4 "Friday Night Comedy Quiz".(paraphrase)

Always look on the bright side of liddle ...

[Dalek Prime]

With or without parole?

Unsupervised probation. Just don't get caught.

Sorry, couldn't be bothered to read the whole thing.

Hehe. The very last time I ever received the strap from my dad, I received that same advice; 'Don't get caught.' Actually, his words were 'I don't care what you do, just don't let me catch you. I don't care if you go to a whorehouse; just don't go to the same one I go to.'

[Walker]

Apply a spark of thought and we see that for contemplation purposes, the form that we call alive can be conceptualized as a channel for energy.

To that end, what we can say about a live wire we can metaphorically say about life, and then it’s off to the races.

Lives come in all shapes and sizes to be gauged, some exist longer than others, they require different insulations, some are cracked and some are patched, etc.

[Walker]

So we will see which way the life of this thread goes.

Comedy hour or ...

Philosophy.

Play the obvious bet.

[Hobbes' Choice]

A girl studying for here exams received a text from here Mum this week asking "What do you want from Life."
After composing a long-winded muse about the thoughts and aspirations for the future; her hopes and her dreams; even her longings - her Mum finally texted back apologising for predictive text with "What do you want from LIDL?"

Radio 4 "Friday Night Comedy Quiz".(paraphrase)

Always look on the bright side of liddle ...

DE dum de dum de dum de dum! Always look in the bright side LIDL, even when you piss your terminal piddle.

[gimocanu]

Life is the highest form of matter. The form in which it has figured out its own existence.

[Hobbes' Choice]

Life is the highest form of matter. The form in which it has figured out its own existence.

Life is not a type of matter. No hydrogen is the highest form of matter since it is the most basic, the most abundant and the most simple. When compressed it gives light the most simple and purest form of energy.

[thedoc]

Life is the highest form of matter. The form in which it has figured out its own existence.

No, Life is only the most complex form of matter, there is no relative high or low when it comes to matter or life. That life is the highest form of matter is only from the perspective of life, not from the perspective of the universe, the universe really doesn't care.