Some parts of the universe are purely material There is no need for angels to push the planets round their orbits.
An important aspect of this discussion is how we conceptualize our existence and the structures that make it what it is, including that dimension that we call the material.
I wouldn’t say “some parts of the universe are material” for example, because it sets it in opposition to the immaterial. It’s like saying some parts of the stove element are red while others are burning hot. To my way of thinking, all rests on a foundation that is Existence itself, who (to signifiy a Being greater than ourselves) brings forth everything that is, where there would otherwise be nothing.
We can understand matter as being that which we observe with the senses. Utilizing our capacity to reason, we can isolate and take measurements of such variables as mass, time, space, charge, and temperature; doing so we have discovered relationships, formulae which describe how matter behaves and interacts. The truest descriptor of the physical world is mathematics.
Beyond that knowledge and the analogies that we use to have its workings of the material world make sense, we can know the material world directly - what it is, is what we are. Containing the social sense of ourselves, developed over the years through the feed back from others, intertwined with our aspirations, capacities, and actions, is this body.
Within the unity of the person there exists our experience of the world, which connects the knower to the known. Our self exists in relation to what it is not and that relationship is determined by the structure of the body-in-the-world. These words disappear if I turn off the screen and alternatively, if I close my eyes. This visual experience is the shifting of ions through cell membranes with the release of neurotransmitters along diverse pathways in the networks that is our nervous system. It includes the monitor and the firing of cells in various locations of the brain, including those that are involved in the formation of ideas, and others which put words to them. All this physical activity is made one by the human spirit, which forms the basis of that organization, utilizing it to express itself.
We can understand ourselves to be creation itself, represented in each of us individually. We do not so much push matter to type on these keys, but rather we are matter united in one being, granted certain gifts that enable us to perceive, feel, think and act as one person.
A good way to think of matter, utilizing the metaphors available to us today, is to consider it some sort of meta-information, things brought into existance by God’s Thoughts, reflected in us as the information we carry in our minds.
It would appear that we do need angels to not only push planets round their orbits, but to make them planets in the first place. Some angels would then appear to us today as the mathematical relationships that weave this world together.
