To address the jibe about the idealist philosopher forced to chose whether the parachute they are given when ejected from a plane exists or not: Doubting existence in this case is not taken to mean that objects lack being, form or capacity for behaviour, but that these qualities correlates with our mental view of the world. To a flea that clings to the harness, no doubt the parachute has no existence, even though it will be brought to earth just as safely as the philosopher.
I don’t doubt that kicking a stone will hurt the toe, despite what we now know: that the stone is almost entirely made of empty space and that the atoms of the toe and the stone never actually make contact. This demonstrates, as much as anything could, that the stone, the toe and the pain are products of our mental processing, and therefore entirely real.
