The realities of dread and pain are part of reality - no doubt about that. So are joy and love. A pure materialist view would have to accept these realities wit

The realities of dread and pain are part of reality - no doubt about that. So are joy and love. A pure materialist view would have to accept these realities without judgement. We _want_ to be able to say that suffering and pain imply meaningless, but I don't think that is consistent with a purely materialistic understanding of reality. It is what it is - that's all that can be said. The materialistic view takes an epistemological stance that precluded the possibility of the metaphysical. That's not the same thing as the actual non-existence of the metaphysical. Fiat money, power and the nation state are all concepts that don't have material existence yet these are realities non-the less. The material world doesn't set the limits to reality, just the context. Even if you see humans/society as just really complex versions of a cellular automata (or composed of nested automata) you can't deny that the emergent properties are more meaningful/significant than the material realities that compose them. The material world isn't a panacea of meaning either.