If life begins at conception, how does it meet the 4 criteria that are required to define something as alive?

Question

In order for something to be considered alive, it must have four characteristics namely; 1-the ability to reproduce, 2-the ability to respond to the environment, 3-the ability to metabolize and 4- the ability to grow.

If life begins at conception, how does it meet the criteria?

1-After the gametes join they can grow in size, it can totally reporduce into more cells hence the reason why it get's bigger and becomes life.....Im having a hard time explaining the other two. The cell already has the programing it will take to come up with a metabolism etc

Answer 1

   The answer to this question, "when is something alive?" is purely subjective. The four points stated above are a subjective classification system. Although you may want to learn it, to get a good grade in the class, you would not want to take the four points as some sort of absolute truth.

We will run though the points and I will show you how they are subjective and not absolute.

#1. As far as a time scale, a 4 year old doesn't have the ability to reproduce but he or she will. We would never say that a 4 year old is not alive. This is the same with a fertilized cell.

#2. Believe it or not, a fertilized cell can respond to its enviroment. It has all the information in it to "know" how what to do and how to prepare for the job ahead. Implanting, growing, how fast to acomplish these things for the availible resorces and incoming resorces. Now it can't respond to the changing pressures of Wall St. or respond to an art painting, but it does respond nicely to the big job it has to worry about.

#3. The ability to metabolize. The cell does not just split and split and not grow from any energy. It does have a limited metabolic system. It may not eat a banana or a steak but in order to preform any task a machine must use and expend energy. This is true for a fertilized cell. It has the energy in it and releases it in an encredibly efficient, and specific way, to fast and it would run out, too slow and it couldn't get the job done.

#4. The fertilized cell has all the ability to grow in the world. If someone tries to make the argument that it can't grow all on its own, you let them know that that kind of argument could lead down a very slippery slope. I know some 17 year olds that can't "make it on their own" but we wouldn't say that they are not alive. The younger and younger you go the more dramatic this can be seen. Just as it takes the special God given love of a mother to take care of a young baby. It takes the same God given ability of the mother in her womb to take care of a baby.

I believe that life begins when it enters the mind of God to make another living soul. As far as if this is as conception or inplantation or the first trimester, we should not be concerned about these question. If we followed God's fixed absolute laws, and not our own subjective ones, these things would never be an issue.  God said for boys and girls to keep their hands off of each other until marriage. Once they find the person that they want to be with, marry and have your babies. Stay together forever.    See, questions like these never come up.

Another question that is hard to define is

Who is my niehbor, that is explained in the Bible by Jesus Christ as well.  

Answer 2

Honestly, being alive doesn't say much. By the same definition a flake of skin with its ~16000 cells is alive, or the thousands more in spit.

Answer 3

I think people only ask this question because they are confusing a scientific question with a moral one. There is no good hard and fast way of pinpointing an instant at which life begins.  I would say myself  that a viable sperm and ovum are alive.  After all, you would know exactly what I meant if I told you that of sperm or an ovum was dead. From this point of view, life stretches back unbroken for almost 4 billion years, and specifically human life for about 200,000.

The important moral question is, at what point does the developing organism acquire the right to be respected as a human being.  My answer to that would be when it is first capable of sensation and thought.

Finally, there is the question of when the developing organism has a right to **legal** protection.  This will be the point at which society would have a right to try to **force** the mother to carry the developing organism, whether she wants to or not.  That, I would have thought, would have to be very late indeed in the game.

Answer 4

Actually there are multiple definitions for life some adding characteristics like homeostasis and adaptation to your list. Having said that, a single cell can certainly satisfy all of the conditions you mentioned as well as some of the most accepted ones.

Response to the environment doesn’t mean it has to be a conscience response (otherwise most plants would fail that condition). Polarisation after the female gamete receives the first sperm (to stop anymore from interacting with it) is a response from external stimuli.

Same thing with metabolism, most species (including fully grown humans) have the metabolism process already programmed, doesn’t have to be a conscious effort to pass the “test”.

The only thing condition a human in that stage of development lacks is consciousness and I don’t believe many people view that as an essential characteristic of life :)