The definition of “life” really only has the purpose of satisfying our desire to answer the philosophical question “what is life?”, and doesn’t really have a practical application. Although it could perhaps have moral implications, such as the morality behind abortions, euthanasia, animal cruelty and environmental conservation, etc.
My reply will be focusing more on the technical mechanisms behind what constitutes “life”, since that is what the original post seems to be most about.
Yes, metabolism is a very vital part of the definition of “life” – hypothetically imagine that metabolism wasn’t a part of what constitutes life: life would have no purpose or direction; if our bodies never required to be sustained or repaired, we would be aimless in our existence - what goal would we have?
If you take this thought even further and think about what it must be like to be immortal (or if you had an eternal life in ‘heaven’, or if you were a god), what purpose would you have?
Although, if you consider this next thought, life still may hold meaning even without metabolism. Many spiritual figures throughout history have practiced “fasting” as a sort of spiritual meditation - some believed (and perhaps still do believe) that the act of “fasting” would make an individual feel closer to divinity. Perhaps that all originated from ancient people having the same thought experiment we are discussing! Hypothetical"immortal gods" that didn’t have to eat, sustain any sort of physical body, or possess a metabolism may have been perceived by ancient people as having the same state of mind that an individual experiences while fasting (since neither are eating food to maintain themselves). However, this doesn’t consider other innate differences between a human being and a hypothetical “immortal god” - such as the fact that a human being still suffers from physical exhaustion and needs resting time for its body to replenish itself, where as an immortal divine being would not.
Ok, so they are trying to say that life begins at an organic level to the exclusion of the building blocks of organic matter due to those three processes.
What compels you to try and prove that atom’s have some innate need to “satisfy” themselves with other atoms? Is it because you refuse to believe that after a certain point, matter becomes inorganic and “non-living”? Or are you perhaps trying to say that “life” itself may be innate to existence, because I may actually agree with that. Or are you saying that physically, they will actively pair up with other atoms, almost as if they were “looking for other atoms”?
For a while, scientists didn’t know whether or not viruses should really even be considered “living”.
I find what you said about the body’s of bacteria interesting, are you making the distinction between viruses and other living creatures, that viruses have bodies with a very simple atomic make-up (there is no cell wall, no mitochondria, no metabolism at all really) and their only activity generally revolves around processes which take place at an atomic level, where as other types of ‘living’ organisms have much more physical activity in their actions and processes? All viruses really do is attach themselves to the body of a host cell through a chemical reaction, and very little kinetic ‘movement’ takes place; then, protein from the virus is sort of injected into the host cell, also through a chemical reaction; this protein then hijacks the host cell’s RNA and causes it to essentially turn in to a virus factory; the cell dies and the reproduced viruses are released. This freshly born batch of viruses then bumps into new host cells merely by chance really, so there is no real major kinetic movement or physical activity taking place in a virus’s “life”.
With other living creatures, there is much more physical involvement in their “life”.