The materiality of the biblical tradition has to do with the quotidian dimension of the vulnerable, the widow, the orphan, the immigrant, the poor and the wherewithal for their dignity and well-being.

THE MATERIALIST IDEOLOGY is based on unprovable assumptions that are intertwined, though not necessarily,  with our notions about science.  Among those are that

a. What human beings can discover about material reality can comprise an exhaustive description of what the physical universe is like. Given the fact that it is one of the major discoveries of modern physics that we cannot do that, the holding of that assumption, stated as a fact or, more honestly put,  merely felt as a preferred notion is justifiably considered to be a quaint remnant of 19th century scientism.  I say that knowing that sciency materialists just hate it when people call their faith quaint. And because it's true.

b. What science does not know about the physical universe is continuous in every aspect with what science is considered to know about it now.  Which, since science is limited by the humanly chosen methods and framing which comprises the method of science, is a pretty huge assumption. Honestly done science can tell you about nothing which cannot be accurately and honestly viewed through its chosen methods, even if those things are there. Actually, "science" is an imaginary thing that exists only in human minds, "it" doesn't tell you anything, those deputed to be scientists do. And lots of them are little more than carny hucksters, psychology profs at prestigious universities such as Jordan Peterson, Stephen Pinker, those who are allowed into the margins of  actual science such as Richard Dawkins, . . .  When you start to think about those things which are only "things" in human imagination, the list of those which modern folk consider as something else is rather astonishingly extensive, given the pretenses of the modernist ideology and allegedly hard realism.

It is entirely possible, as Eddington put it so well, that there may be entire realms of physical "law" that are undiscoverable by even the best of human investigation.  There may be aspects of physical reality which do not fit with the framing of the physical universe which comprises what we consider science and which we will never be able to make fit with it. If the famous discontinuity between physics as done by those in the tradition of Einstein and as done by those who investigated quantum mechanics will ever be reconciled or if that discontinuity is an already noticed hint of what we will never know and which, indeed may be unknowable is an open question.  At best this assumption of materialism is, to put it mildly, premature.  Yet entire fields of deputed science are based on that faith, the entirety of the "behavioral sciences" among the worst, cosmology and the speculative branches of evolutionary biology not that far behind in many cases.

c. That there is nothing other than what human science and the human conception of the physical universe which is real.  Which, considering that science intentionally throws out anything which will not work within the chosen framework of scientific method, may be the biggest leap of naive faith of these assumptions, none of which is a logical necessity to start with, science would probably be better if all were thrown out completely.

Science, as it is ideally conceived, can only make claims about that which is carefully and correctly observed and carefully and correctly measured, including those things which can be observed and measured through humanly invented, humanly made instruments. And those have to be correctly conceived of and working as intended and, quite often, their reported results correctly interpreted.  In the actual practice of professional scientists, that is not necessarily a strictly observed requirement.  

Anything which cannot fit into that framing or pass through that filter would be something science can't deal with at all. That is a lot of the science that is published and held to be science and it always has been.  The public presentation of science concentrates on the successes and not on the things which were once held to be as reliably known as today's science but is now discontinued, holdings which have certainly not to have retained its reputed reliability. Science is what living scientists say is science and if there is one suspicion about that which is reliable, it is that much of what scientists say is science at any given time will not stand a test of time.  I could go into Max Planck's famous remark that scientific progress is measured in funerals as the old guard gives way, the old guard holding to those ephemeral items of science.

Human beings with the credentials to call themselves scientists and get away with it can pretend that scientific methods can do what they can't do and colleges and universities, the media, law courts, etc. will pretend they are legitimate.  

The sociological divinatory practice of polling cannot even come up with the first logical requirement of doing what they claim to, having a large enough, actually randomly chosen sample of the large populations they claim to be able to describe, so their claims cannot even fit within the logical extension of scientific method which chooses to ignore that the entire basis of that assumption in this materialistic faith claims is true about reality.  Yet it is commonly held and treated to be applied science.  It's most openly corrupt form, in the kind of opinion polling that "journalism" focuses on is about as reliable as a newspaper horoscope, yet they continue on even as they whine that the vast majority of the population they poll can be known to actually do one thing, they hang up on telephone pollsters, yet that majority never figures in the reported results.  And journalism and politicians and even the pseudo-scientists who should certainly notice that glaring problem with it, buy it like the latest quack promoted on talk-TV.  

I strongly suspect that the fluidity and mutability and unpredictability of a single individual consciousness makes the claimed scientific basis of polling a pseudo-science from the start.  Yet it is a pseudo-science that is firmly believed in by, especially, the most ardent of materialists under the influence of the entirely unscientific corporate mass media which has largely given up the rather harder and more expensive reporting of fact, polling being one of the many replacements for that, opinion, personal preference being another of the major replacements of it. Modern journalism is more crap than it ever has been.

Forget the entirety of reality being comprised in the product of science, science knowably cannot deal with many aspects of our not only observed but all too well known, daily experienced reality.  

And that's only one of the aspects of the decadent dishonesty that comes in when you make materialism the required ideology of the allegedly educated class, a naive faith which is the actual basis of modernism, something which has gone from an ideology to being little more than a team brand or something more akin to the world of fashion than of philosophical conviction.  Or, more typically, a license to base your life and view of reality, the minimal extent to which you care about that, on selfishness. I think that's its major attraction among the affluent and those who would like to be, or academics who would like to have sex with more of their students.

There is a different view of materiality which the snobs and self-focused fan boys of materialism hate, that is something noted by Walter Brueggeman in that lecture I keep promoting, Slow Wisdom As A Subversion of Reality:

The triad of fidelity first focuses on the body whereas the triad of control focuses characteristically on abstractions of power and possession. The couplet of justice and righteousness are concerned with the ways in which the resources of the community are mobilized for the bodily reality of persons and the healthy reality of the body politic. The materiality of the biblical tradition has to do with the quotidian dimension of the vulnerable, the widow, the orphan, the immigrant, the poor and the wherewithal for their dignity and well-being. Thus the indictment in the ancient city, they have grown fat and sleek, they know no limit in deeds of wickedness, they do not judge with justice the cause of the poor, they do not defend the right of the needy.

Which is a far different thing from the pretenses of would-be scientific materialism.  I have to point out that this view of "justice and righteousness' is a far cry from how those are commonly thought of in not only modernism but throughout human history.  "Justice" in modern non-egalitarian democracy is focused on the punishment and control of and, not infrequently, the destruction of those in the very underclass who Mosaic justice intends to lift up and relieve of their need and to gain their dignity.  "Righteousness" seems to often be regarded as a synonym of judgemental snobbery either of those in the upper class or in those in lower classes who can be counted on never to give them any trouble, kicking down instead of up.  Respectable scrupulosity is something it traffics in more than the morality that the Prophetic tradition talks about.  I think a lot of the worst of the 1960s would be social revolution foundered on the failure to define such terms adequately.  I'll post on that later today.