For if you go by the Rambam and Ibn Pakuda, then Physics is a part of the Oral Law.

My dad took me to Cal Tech every year for the alumni day. [He got his master's degree in Mechanical Engineering from Cal Tech]. But I never met Feynman or Gelman --sadly enough. ]
  At the time I was not aware of the aspect of physics and math that is numinous.
  And this seems like a serious issue to me now. For if you go by the Rambam and Ibn Pakuda, then Physics is a part of the Oral Law. So take that together with the Gra's quote from the Yerushalmi tractate Peah chapter 1 law 1] "Every word of Torah is worth more than all the other mizvot of the Torah". [The Mishna there says ת''ת כנגד כולם. והירושלמי מסבירה שזה שייך גם לכל דיבור של תורה]

You would get that learning math and physics is tremendous  thing regardless if one is talented in it or not.
After all when it comes to learning Torah no one has even suggested that it is only for smart people.

So going with the Rambam, learning Physics is on par with learning Gemara. [See Laws of Learning Torah where he divides Torah into three parts-(1) oral (2) written and (3) Gemara,- and then says what he calls Pardes is in the category of Gemara].

so I suggest that everyone ought to have an in-depth session and a fast learning session in Physics Mathematics and Gemara. [The fast session is to say the words in order and go on until the end of the book and then review. The in depth session means lots of review plus commentaries.  ]

Sodomy is the death penalty in Leviticus. [That is not the case with all forbidden relations. For example intercourse with a woman that has seen blood but not gone yet to a natural body of water is Karet but not the death penalty.]

So there is really nothing to be proud about doing sodomy. And calling it marriage does not change it.

So the fact that there are some things that one can question in the Torah, yet you can see that without Bible, people have no idea of the difference between right and wrong.

So you do need this medieval idea of combining Reason with Faith.


[What I ought to add is that essay on the web site of Dr Kelley Ross that brings the idea of the Rambam that natural law was a needed stage in order to get to Mount Sinai. Yet without Torah, people lose sight of what really is natural law.



[The synthesis of reason and faith was really a medieval idea. But nowadays you can see it also in Nelson [the Kant Fries School] and in Hegel. With Nelson [and Dr Kelley Ross] the two realms of faith and reason are separate. With Hegel they are also separate but join together in their origin. That is to see that Hegel is basically a kind of modern Plotinus who takes his cue from Plato but uses Aristotle to fill in the gaps. Hegel in a similar way as Plotinus see everything coming down from Logos. [I think so anyway. That is at any rate the impression I get from his Logic. ]

I can see the problems that people have on Talmud when you see the religious world to be kind of off its rocker. My claim is that the religious world represents the opposite of the Talmud. I am sorry if I never made that clear. My feeling is that whatever the religious world claims is obligatory or is the law, you would be more accurate doing the opposite.

Rav Nahman in fact said something similar. There was a rav in some city in which there were a few followers of Rav Nahman. His disciples wanted to know the accurate law about different points. he said to ask that Rav and then do the excat opposite of whatever he says.

This just goes to show how far the religious world is from Torah.


However I should add that there are some aspects of the religious world that I think are great--for example the straight Litvak yeshivas [Lithuanian]. I also think that Rav Nahman is a great souce of amzing advice.


However I admit I did not manage very well in the frum world at all. But I attribute that to the fact that the Sitra Achra has penetrated the religious world. So that there is really no where to go that is clean or pure.

 Questions on Talmud. 
Sex with a female is considered to be sex.  But  Sodomy with a male is always liable the death penalty, no matter what the age is. [That is stoning.]

That is to say: there are three ways to acquire a wife,- Sex, money, or a document. Sex is in fact one way. A when one marries by means of sex in front of two witnesses for the sake of marriage, the marriage is considered valid. Also in terms of prohibitions, sex with a forbidden female among the forbidden relations is thought to be liable the death penalty.





Gentiles
In terms of the attitude towards gentiles you are right there is a problem. The way some have answered that is that gentiles that are Christians are thought to be gerei Hashar according to the Beit Yoseph.. In any case, besides the Beit Yoseph, there is the Meiri [a Rishon and Abravanal and Rav Yaakov Emden.




Secular morality is always shifting. So to ask on this from secular morality does not seem valid. But if there is a question based on objective morality then I agree the Talmud can be wrong. The Talmud does not claim Divine Revelation. It is trying to work on the laws of the Torah based on human reason.

If the laws of Torah would be goals in themselves and thought to stand alone then there can be problems when they seem to disagree with morality based on Reason. But All the medieval rishonim do not hold from Divine Command Theory. All rishonim hold the laws of Torah are right and true because they have as their basis objective morality. That is they are meant to bring to certain goals that are recognizable by Reason.

If the question is "Is everything in the Talmud right?" The answer is no. In every single question there are different opinions and one is right and the others are wrong. The point of learning Talmud is to try to become awakened to objective morality. And I admit that does not always seem to be the result. But that is the point of it. Or as David Bronson said the point is to discover justice.

to appreciate the great gift I had to be part of the Mir Yeshiva in NY

I am not sure why I have not merited to learn Torah. It seems it always backfires when I try. One simple answer is that verse that the sages brings about Torah--"If you abandon me one day I will abandon you two days." That is to say if I had just managed to appreciate the great gift I had to be part of the Mir Yeshiva in NY or at least when I got to Israel to try to find a straight Litvak Yeshiva --like there already was in Safed. Then maybe things would be different. But once I more or less walked out on that who path, then it seems I just can not get back in.

In spite of the problems in current day USA, I look upon the basic foundations as being sound. I see the development of natural law from Saadia Gaon through Aquinas and John Locke as being a development and not a change of venue.

Most people that are critical of the USA have not lived under a real religious or secular tyranny. They just do not know what a blessing it is to have your human rights safeguarded.

learning Torah

One of the important pieces of advice that come from the Gra is that learning Torah tends to solve a lot of life's problems.

The questions that people have on Torah I think would apply to any system. The reason is that no mater what system is being implemented human nature will always demand that 95% of all the people in that system will be using it for personal motives of power and money and revenge and pleasure. That is simple human nature. It has nothing to do with the actual value of the system. The whole issue is  on that 5% that are doing it sincerely if it actually brings them to a higher moral level. 

And from what I could see at the Mir  and Shar Yashuv in NY, learning Torah lishma [for its own sake-not for money] definitely brings people to a higher moral level. 

The problem is those that learn Torah for money. This causes the יערוף כמטר לקחי ("My teaching will murder like rain") effect. See the Gemara Taanit. 

However those few great Litvak yeshivot, where Torah is learned for its own sake, makes it all worthwhile. [And I wish I was able myself to be learning, but I figure it takes a certain kind of merit to be worthy of learning Torah that I just do not seem to have. Even the little bit I can understand is only because I learned from true Torah greats, like Rav Shmuel Berenbaum,(the rosh yeshiva of Mir in NY) David Bronson (my learning partner), and Rav Naphtali Yeager (the rosh yeshiva in Shar Yashuv).