I am taking
Hangdawg13 to be exploring ideas, rather than taking rigid positions on them. You might be reading too much into what he said.
You may not realize this, but materialistic scientists is not a recognized branch of science anywhere except the minds of non-scientists.
I agree with you there. I do think
Hangdawg13 is giving more weight to "materialism" than he should.
Yes, there are some people saying that consciousness is an illusion. One of them is Dan Dennett, be he is a philosopher, not a scientist. And when he talks of "illusion" he does not mean what
Hangdawg13 is probably taking him to mean. It is worth reading what Dennett actually says about this. It is in his book "From Bacteria to Bach and Back".
"Hard Problem" of consciousness and defining the observer.
I'm not sure what
Hangdawg13 meant by that. The so-called "hard problem" was posed by David Chalmers, who is a philosopher and not a scientists. Personally, I think Chalmers is looking at consciousness the wrong way.
Qualia
This is a word used to refer to the qualities of experience, particularly of perceptual experience. It is another term that comes from philosophers. Personally, I'm a qualia skeptic (or a "qualia-phobe" as they like to describe it). I'm guessing that
Hangdawg13 is also a qualia skeptic.
More generally, I see
Hangdawg13 as teasing out ideas rather than making rigid assertions.
Fundamentalism - the anti-American, anti-Christian branch of American Christianity