What's to trust? If you have percepts you have percepts, if you don't you don't. You do (else you would not be reading these responses and responding to them).
What I mean by perception is my immediate conscious experience. It is all I am conscious of. If you mean something else by perception, that is fine. To prevent any confusion I will just use the word conscious or consciousness.
Since what we are conscious of is all that we can know or know about, what else could reality be? There cannot be anything that we cannot be conscious of in any way whatsoever. Are we conscious of the atoms? Not directly, but we are conscious of them in two ways, their direct manifestation in all of matter which is comprised of them and our understanding of their nature (which we discovered by studying the nature of the matter we are directly conscious of.) We may not be directly conscious of all that is, but there cannot be anything we cannot be conscious of in any way whatsoever.
Some have suggested there can be things we cannot be conscious of in any way at all. But this is meaningless. For there to be something we could not be conscious of at all, it would have to be something that had no effect, in any way on anything we are or could be conscious of. But such a thing would have no relationship whatsoever to anything we are conscious of. If something had no relationship whatsoever to what we can be conscious of, relative to what we are conscious of, it would have no qualities whatsoever. It cannot exist.
What we are conscious of is reality. If it is not, what does the word reality mean? I think those who suggest reality is something other than what we are conscious of are confusing the meaning of reality, with our understanding of the nature of reality or existence. We can certainly be mistaken about that, as every historical scientific mistake is evidence of. But even scientific mistakes are only mistakes because existence, the one (and only one) we are conscious of has a specific nature, and we only just now are beginning to get a good understanding of some aspects of that nature.
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There is some I agree with in the rest of your comments, but more I disagree with, but, since I have no intention of changing anyone's mind about anything, and the reasons I disagree would require lenghty explanations, I'll spare you (and me).
Just this, you said: Ask them if completely wiping out all humanity and all life forms entirely off the face of the earth is an evil or bad thing. Ask them to *prove* it.
I'll work backwards.
Prove, to whom? Most people have the idea of proof wrong. The purpose of proof is not to convince others, the purpose of proof is to ensure one has not made mistakes in their own reasoning. Do I have to prove I can see to anyone else before it is true?
Good and evil are relative terms. Nothing is just "good" or "evil." A thing (or action) is good (or bad) only if it is good or bad relative to some goal or end, that is, a purpose; more exactly, good and bad pertain only to beings capable of having goals and purposes. Since the ultimate purpose of an individual's life is his enjoyment of it, whatever interfere's with that purpose is bad, and whatever advances that purpose is good. Since, "wiping out all humanity and all life forms entirely off the face of the earth," would necessarily include the wiper, which would certainly preclude the wiper from enjoying his life (even if he were insane enought to think it wouldn't), it would be bad. Oddly enough, there really are a great meany people with the psychology of your hypothetical "wiper." They are called environmentalists.
Hank
You forgot the standard Objectivist modifier "up to the point where the individual's enjoyment infringes on another's enjoyment."
Otherwise, you just endorsed Jeffrey Dahmer.