Life because of water

One of the most recent expeditions of science was to attempt to find water on Mars, was all to prove that Mars could support life, but all of this ignores one common thought, and that thought of course is that Biology may be wrong. You see for years Biology has stuck to a to a series of logic checks when it comes to life, mostly because we're stuck on a single planet and really haven't seen life outside of that ecosystem. So our thought is that life must require the conditions on our planet in order evolve or come into being.

Really that is arrogance on our part, and it has lead to helping religions establish their belief system, which leads to the thought that another form of life would all but destroy most religious beliefs, especially if we run into a group that is polytheistic (also why the hell is 1 god a more advanced thought than many gods?). But more on my hopes later, really we're harping on biology. The fact of the matter is we have made assumptions based solely on our own Biosphere. Sure, that is in line with science, to make laws / theory based only off of observations, but I feel that it ignores some key facts about our scientific knowledge.

First, we assume that viruses are non living, mostly on the case that they don't have the ability to replicate on their own, that they require another life form in order to reproduce, but if that is what is separating viruses from life than what about all the insects which require another form of life in order for their offspring to come to be? I mean sure they are injecting something a little more complex than a strand or 2 of RNA, but on the same note they are a good deal larger.

There is also the notion that somehow all life must be hydrocarbon based. I mean that is why we're on mars, to find water, thus suggesting life could be there. Really the water could mean nothing, I mean what if life has come to be on Venus, and they have evolved to live off of Sulfuric Acid. Really its our qualifications for life, now granted they have been adapted so that we don't call a fire a living thing anymore, but maybe the carbon / hydro requirement is a bit off.

I don't know, maybe its just because I don't have a PhD / Major in biology, but it would seem to me that we are taking a very narrow perspective on what life is.