Is there a religious way out of the hedonism of most ascetics?

When God was defined as not material, spiritual, and not of this world, that led to the idea that life is only meant not to suffer, and not-suffering is attained by way of detachment from the material world because desires bring suffering. That is the hedonistic position held by most ascetics, although they don't put it quite that way.

The Vedas, Buddha and Christ defined satisfaction as basically the ascetic cessation of suffering caused by the material world of material desires seeking satisfaction.  Their God was a blissfully inward God reached only by way of the cessation of desires.

"A thousand pleasures do not compensate for one pain," said a hedonistic Petrarch, which could have been the theme song of traditional religious gurus.

But when you define Godhood as in and of the material world and reached only through material and supermaterial evolution, then life and the world are seen as more than suffering.

That is the difference between traditional theology and theological materialism. The first is thoroughly pessimistic the second is thoroughly optimistic.

Life has no purpose if life is seen only as suffering needed to be blocked or detached from.

Godhood can be attained by the pains and pleasures of rising material evolution, which brings purpose back to life, and not merely death.

Even so, we can conservatively retain those first attempts at defining Godhood as we transform them, which is the Twofold Path.