Leigh,
I am puzzled by your ascribing "substantiality", the ability to "flow",
etc. to both atoms and electric charge. Your reason seems to be that both
are "locally conserved". (Perhaps I misread you - please correct me.)
It is not apparent to me why this should be the criterion of
"substantiality", the ability to "flow", etc., or indeed just what
"locally conserved" means here.
Atoms can transmute and even conceivably disappear, leaving only a myriad
of particles or only radiation.
Charge is only conserved as an algebraic sum, after counting some as
"positive" and others as "negative" (we might have labeled them "green"
and blue"). Is "substance" created (destroyed) in the process of pair
production (positron-electron annihilation)? Is there a "negative
substantiality"?
I am not being argumentative; I truly seek to follow your thinking,
especially your adamant dogmatization about viewpoints which seem to be
only conceptually or "philosophically", and not empirically or
mathematically, divergent. Down this road lies religious wrangling, not
science.