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  1. I think there is another layer to that: it is not rational to do something just because you find subjective personal value in it - your values need to be rational too. There are subtleties in the Objectivist ethics because of such layers - which fundamentally arise because the "objective" derives from the relation between reality and your mind, and you are not infallible. I think the simplest way to put it is like the above with the rider that: and make very sure that your values are in fact rational. However while you do believe those values are rational, and if acting on them doesn't violate the actual basis of morality, then it is moral to act to achieve them (indeed, can be immoral not to). For example, I recall Harry Binswanger once telling someone that if they had "green" values they should act on that: but they should examine their premises. However no Objectivist would say that kind of thing to a Nazi setting out to kill people, because it doesn't matter how sincere their belief is, it violates fundamental morality about the initiation of physical force. Ayn Rand's view on this particular topic might be best summed up by here comment: "The question is not whether I give a dime to a beggar; it is whether I have a right to exist if I don't." There is nothing wrong with giving dimes to beggars or setting up a foundation to do so: as long as it is entirely voluntary, and I would add: runs on the principle of justice not mercy. (Note that justice does not exclude giving someone the benefit of the doubt).
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  2. That something contradicts "known facts" doesn't mean that it is a logical contradiction. It can mean that our knowledge so far was not complete: what seemed to us to be incontrovertible facts, were not. So it seemed to us for centuries that time was a universal variable, for everyone the same. Now we know that this is not true, see the twin paradox, which breaks a law that we thought to be an incontrovertible truth. A famous statement by Arthur C. Clarke is "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", the fact that something looks to us like magic doesn't mean that it is a contradiction, something impossible. A God who could use the most advanced technology you can imagine, could very well do things that would look like pure magic to us. A logical contradiction would be for example a triangle with 4 angles or a married bachelor, there is no way that these could exist, but the fact that a known law is shown to be violated in some cases is not a logical contradiction. You cannot disprove the existence of God by pure logic.
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