Actually I don’t know what life is either, though we all know it’s different from non-life.
And more than an elaborate parlor trick of the carbon atom.
I also stumble over the assumption that religious scholars “know” more than anyone else about such things. If only!!
As it is, only God really knows what He’s doing. This can be a comforting thought.
Well, the difference between life and non-life is pretty obvious, except possibly in the case of the most primitive organisms.
I will agree that when you talk about souls, it becomes more complicated.
But the Founders spoke of an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and if you start messing with those basic rights, of which the right to life is most basic of all, then you soon find yourself in deep water, trying to figure out who deserves to live, or to be free, and who doesn’t.
We can agree, scientifically as well as religiously, that a fetus is both human and living from the moment of conception, until it is killed. And that the purpose of an abortion is to kill it.
With the first division of the zygote, the newly conceived LIFE is directing its own growth, even dividing the tasks for living to allow his or her first organ for survival to develop and accomplish implantation ... that organ which is shed with birth into the air world. The newly conceived LIFE makes ALL the organs for survival in the environment to which he or she is exposed (water world or ari world).