and entropy the beginning
im going to write this regardless of the fact that im not going to use background knowledge. if it is bollocks, email me saying so...
would it be stupid to assume that life is a cycle and a cycle is life. More succesful life forms can prolong the length of the cycle ( through reduction of the elements of randomness, such as getting hit by a car or being infected with a cold which could shorten your life /... this goes into a tangent), or recreate the cycle such as through reproduction (the same thing big companies do when their products begin to wane and no one is buying them anymore, they phase in a new product that's better than the last one thus it disappears. The new product is birthed from what mistakes were made in the old one but last longer, natural selection in the marketing world).
Life, like the word god seems to be given to things we can't understand, maybe the word life is selfish because we assume just because we can't explain ourselves we have to give ourselves another word for it. What if we are all god in some respects, we have choice, we can create and destroy, for instance, to an ant, if it had the capability to try and explain, and we were giving it sugar cubes everyday, it would call us god, as it
couldn't explain us until it could communicate with us, but it's mind wouldn't be able to understand or comprehend because it hasnt experienced what we have through out our lives. In some respects the Sun isn't such a silly idea for God as it gives us light which in turn survives pretty much almost every living thing on earth. now we understand it's 'just' a burning ball of gas, it isn't so great now. (. maybe to be a true god you have to be able to understand what happens next, but to control what happens next, in the future. to narrow down elements of chaos which will determine the length of our life cycle and what could be our future children's length of life.
imo the word life with respect to the question 'what is life', means nothing. it's what's done between the beginning and the end is what does.