There is a reality beyond the material world. We all instinctively know this, yet in the modern mind, anything beyond the material is considered "unscientific" and cast with a wide net.
That wide net denies everything, putting metaphysical discussion on par with discussions about the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy. It's a disingenuous argument and one that any honest person recognizes as flawed. Yet to the midwit mind, it's enough to deny the meta-physical. The beyond that we don't understand very well.
Still, it's hard to live in an existence without anything of the beyond, of the metaphysical. A purely material world is a cold and lonely place. A place of meaninglessness and purposelessness. Yet it's a frame so many people accept readily, much like "scientific consensus" or conventional wisdom.
The reason authorities push a purely material world is because a purely material world means much less justification is necessary for what they are doing. They don't have to answer to any authority beyond their own. They don't have to because in a purely material world, morality is completely subjective.
Ethics is a particularly thorny problem for the materialists. How do you determine whether something is good or evil? To deny that evil exists would be ridiculous on its face. We see it every day and too many people would riot if such a thing were asserted. Even the most compliant sheep would recognize that something is really wrong.
But to assert your own morality! That's the ultimate authority, being able to define good and evil for other people. Indeed, that's the power that authorities now have. To use the wrong pronoun is a grievous evil. As is not getting vaccinated, or not supporting Ukraine, or not supporting unlimited bank bailouts.
It's a subjective morality and it's easily justified in a purely materialist philosophy.
We've been made compliant by the destruction of philosophy.