This is a question that I have been pondering for a while. What determines life? I know that there is clinicly alive like having a working heart and brain, but is that really alive? In other words, is there any evidence proving or disproving the existence of souls?

life needs these features to be called life:

needs to process energy/Chemicals -> Stoffwechsel in german
needs to be able to reproduce
needs to have a genetic or otherwise buildingplan -> no fully random structure

so I suppose a plant cell technicly has life since it can reproduce, process chemicals, and it has a cellular wall to keep its structure. Therefore, a plant cell has a soul?????

Wasnt your question, what determines life?, not what things have souls.
You dont need souls to have living things.

Souls do not exist, and even if they did they are not part of science.

The scientifc definition of life is not completely clear, but here is the basic one..a living thing generally has these qualities (if you dont know the meanings look them up

1. Homeostasis
2. Organization
3. Metabolism
4. Growth
5. Adaptation
6. Response to stimuli
7. Reproduction

Now obvously there are exceptions.. such as that some animals cant reproduce because they are sterile like a mule..

Using this kind of definition its pretty obvious that a cat or an amoeba is alive...but about viruses? Scientice is still uncertain about the status of virses. Then there are things like prions, which are non-standard protein molecules which can actually "reproduce" and be infectious (it is believed Mad Cow disease is caused by prions).

While a simple protein doesnt seem like it can be alive, a prion does exhibit some primitive similarities to life. Viruses are even closer to living things, having a complete RNA strand.

What about a computer virus? it too has some basic similarities to life..then there are complex systems that have some life-like qualities, like weather patterns, storm systems, etc.

One of the perils of using strict definitions for things like this is that we get locked into a binary viewpoint.. where something is either purely alive or purely non-living. We should realize that like most things, there is a gradient between the poles. A rock is not alive, and an aligator surely is, and there are many stops in between..

Prions dont really have a metobolism,
so I would not call them life.

A virus is a lifeform to me. It cant live by its own, but thats not a requisite of life.
(humans cant live without certain bacterias in their digestion tract either)

I think the definition is more usefull to determine if a planet bears life at all, If a certain
structure is found on an extraterretrical planet.

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is there any evidence proving or disproving the existence of souls

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I kinda asked both. Sorry for not saying both in the topic...

Soul is not a scientific term, so you cant proove or disprove it with scientitfic methods.

This is like proving or disproving if life is cute or not.

If you would want to proove if in a lifeform is a soul,
you need to first proove that souls exist,
then what make up the properties of a soul,
and then what determines its accurence in a lifeform.

Until now step 1 is not even proved.

well see as far as every scientific definition ive seen really has many faults, that to be honest i dont know how you'd fix, like we could literally make life in a way... a robot can build others like itself, and be self-suffiecient, does that mean it has life? what determines what we consider a soul?is it the ability to make decision, because in that case then nothing has life, because our decisions are based on physical properties in our mind and other stimulants........ this is really a question that cannot be answered because before you can determine what is alive, you need to define life, and about the only definition you could go with would be "not dead".