Why materialists are predominantly materialists

[Neo-Scholastic]

We don't know "the experience itself", we know what we tell ourselves about the experience.

Clearly false. No one experiences pain after they form a concept of pain. Pain is the experience itself - primal and unmediated.

I think consciousness is just an illusion.  Do you have any actual evidence that it isn't?

Of what is consciousness an illusion? Again you engage in self-refutation. You cannot think consciousness is an illusion without consciously thinking about it.