3 Questions For Believers (A work in progress.)

[Jackalope]

How are you planning on examining their subjective qualia?

Go by what they describe orally or in writing. And if a select few of them can't speak and can't write, make inferences about them based on other human beings similar to them in many characteristics.

There's also fMRI scans to make use of as well.

That's not exactly what I would call examining qualia using your senses, and as far as I'm aware fMRI isn't useful at examining qualia. I'd certainly grant that you can infer something about someone's subjective state, but experience the qualia that they experience?

Only a materialist monist would be likely agree with that statement. A monist idealist or duaist would not. That's part of the problem with the question, it's written from a materialist's point of view - and no theist is a material monist. They aren't going to agree, pretty much ever.

Of course they won't just simply agree, but isn't the point of the OP to get them to reconsider their position?

The savvy ones are going to make the same observation that I'm making: that our preference for relying only on empiricism is precisely that, a preference, and *is not itself demonstrable empirically* - and they're correct on that point: you cannot assert that empiricism is the only method for ascertaining truth when the truth if that claim is not demonstrable empirically.

I may be an empiricist (but not exclusively so), but I understand empiricism is not the only game in town. You're going to have to engage them on their own battlefield. Think about it - how successful is a monist idealist going to be convincing a materialist that materialism is false? The converse is the same.