Are you saying that the wish for a resolution of our search for meaning prevents us from jettisoning the idea of free will?

No, I didn't intend to comment on the free will aspect of Bennet's argument. I'm suggesting only that Bennet's contention - that it is in the popularly perceived notion that a material theory of consciousness is inimical to free will that the main reason for the disenchantment with the theory consists - is misguided. I'm trying to suggest alternative explanations for the popular antipathy towards a materialist theory of consciousness.

Yes, and the alternative explanation is what I was trying to interpret. If not that, what? Maybe rephrase.

The idea I was trying to express - hopefully not ambiguously - is that people aren't primarily concerned with what may be the consequences for the free will debate of a materialist theory of consciousness but, in summary, that they are instead primarily concerned about how this theory effectively condemns them to absolute eternal annihilation. OK maybe I'm mistaken in thinking my op expressed my view reasonably clearly, but off hand I cant figure how to clarify it further!

NB: I have now edited my op slightly by adding (maybe more in hope than expectation) what might be a slightly clarifying clause to the end of the second para!) - Btw, despite any unconscious flaws in my means of expression, thanks for your interest anyway :)

Sure, and thanks for your efforts at clarifying.

...they are instead primarily concerned about how this theory effectively condemns them to absolute eternal annihilation. — Robert Lockhart

I'm tempted to say "of course." For me this "absolute eternal annihilation" is a fundamental issue. If one believes in real death, this belief radiates outward on to many other beliefs. Life is framed as a dream in its ephemerality. No talking head's feverish grand narrative transcends the vanity or ultimate/eventual emptiness of all things. We are thrown into brute fact, mortal, always already piecing together a fragile and temporary future from the absurd given. The talking head (evangelist or intellectual or...) can't die our deaths for us.

So there's a grand and terrible solitude in this perspective on existence. Many who do except real death still escape via identification with Progess (moral, intellectual, artistic). I do too, in my way. Language is a leap from the grave. I hide from my dying flesh in the iterability and ideality of concept, in the objectivity or materiality of the sign. That's presumably what these scientists do. They are so identified with the work that they are not troubled by what it means for this contingent selves. Those contingent selves are just vehicles which Science uses and throws away.

there is also surely the ubiquitous wish innate to humans not only that they be happy but be sustainably so, and additionaly that our situation should contain some inherent purpose beyond permitting mere ephemeral gratification — Robert Lockhart

Surely you're right here, too. Of course Science and Progress and Language involve "inherent purpose" but are ultimately ephemeral themselves. If I escape my personal death in terms of the progress of the species or of some community, the species itself and every community is also mortal. Only an immortal God can save us from our ephemerality. But I'm tempted to ask seekers after this immortality: what do you want to do with it? Give them eternal life on earth. Now what? Safe in their immortality, they are likely enough to enjoy the usual ephemeral pleasures more intensely. They can procrastinate indefinitely with respect to making something of themselves. Death drives culture. Death itself makes life vivid and important. Death is life's foil.

t0m: Personally, I think, regardless of the possible objective validity of any materialist theory of consciousness, that the flaw inherent to all atheistic descriptions of our human situation is their view that through advocating for our acceptance of the concept of a materialist origin of consciousness - by virtue of which insight we could then it is claimed attain a freedom unencumbered by illusion to concentrate on maximising our potential for fulfilment in this life, albeit transient – their view that through advocating for such an acceptance, they thereby justifiably purport to represent a tenable solution to our predicament. – The view that with a realistically attainable measure of stoicism we can make a good play from the only admittedly not ideal hand of cards fate has dealt us.
My own view is that this is inescapably a platitude. Apart from the reality that, in terms of the tolerability of their personal situation, chance inevitably deals a terrible hand to some - presumably then obliging such unfortunates, from the view point of atheistic theory, simply to pragmatically inculcate in the face of the prospect of unqualified annihilation that level of stoicism happening to be proportionate to the malignity of their current situation - there is also the question of how you could know you possessed an adequate concept of absolute eternal annihilation in terms of how profoundly consequential a thing it might actually intrinsically be. - It is of course an axiom that you cannot informedly reconcile yourself towards that which you cannot fully envisage. But then the news that a materialist theory of consciousness presents us with a predicament inherently unsolvable would be impossible to sell, the similarity between those of a religious and atheistic persuasion being that the adheerants to both outlooks equally indespensably require a solution to our predicament. We are incapable it seems to comprehend the possibility that there could exist in principle no valid solution to our human predicament, necessitating at all costs then that one be manufactured, even if in practice we could find any such contrived 'solution' to be satisfactory only by default.

Got to go now! – But would like to add more subsequently if I've got time.