[One]

Originally Posted by Cantando

Surely, a basic prerequisite of life is that it is sentient - of, for example, light, temperature, water, or a source of food.

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

Sentience is the capacity for basic consciousness — the ability to feel or perceive, not necessarily including the faculty of self-awareness. The word sentient is often confused with the word sapient, which can connotate knowledge, higher consciousness, or apperception. The root of the confusion is that the word conscious has a number of different meanings in English. (One can easily distinguish the two by looking at their Latin roots: sentire, "to feel"; and sapere, "to know".)

Hmm, the dictionary is ambiguous here. I usually reserve 'sentient' for more advanced nervous systems. I don't think bacteria is sentient under this definition. To use sentient to mean basic mechanical stimulus response seems a waste of a word. We'd have to include things like burglar alarms and ^landmines.

You seem to be confused about what life is and what specific, physical structures life may be attaching itself to.

Obviously, else I wouldn't have bothered with trying to define it.
Correct me if I mistake you, but you seem to be referring to a dualistic spirit/material system here. In my experience theology is more voodoo than philosophy. I tend to avoid it. Perhaps that's only my own shortcoming.