You know those times when you read or listen to people who just don't know what they are talking about? Paradox have had real good and serious depictions of historical events in the past, but for me I experience that they let someone who has no clue write box and event descriptions in many Paradox games of late. Their depiction of materialism in Stellaris is somewhat caricature-like, just like how they depict the USSR and socialism in HoI4 (while unwittingly glorifying Trotsky). I don't think it's an agenda, it's just that they do it to the best of their ability, when they should've asked consultants for fact checks (i.e. real proponents of materialism or communism) instead of writing (by default liberal "common knowledge" preconception) statements no materialist or communist would sign on to. The game universe seems to support 'spirituality'/idealism at its core, which in essence falsifies materialism, while letting both exist simultaneously with real effects, when they in reality exclude each other.
By including "materialism" in a by design religious game/universe, all materialist civs and players turn out to be silly - because they are wrong. The game should've been designed the other way around, i.e. with religion in a materialist universe, but where, figuratively speaking, prayers are left unheard.
Sure, they take a lot of other liberties, so why not, the game works. But they simultaneously want you to immerse yourself in their stories. This gets hard when the inner logic of the stories are in contradiction. It's a bit like magic intense games like Skyrim. The feudal economy of that game does not reflect the state of "technology". Why do menial manual labor when you could just do some magic to skip it. The level of magic in that game would correspond to a super high tech economy, beyond our modern one, in terms of automation and transport, yet it's all surrealistically in a medieval setting. A good story should have no paradoxes or contradictions, even if it's just made up, to be plausible. So, yeah, paradox interactive.