Having grown up in an environment where there was a lot of "physics" and a lot of "metaphysics", I'm convinced that both are equally "real".  Not like some sort of "god of the gaps", but in the sense that there is no gap.

How did you manage to convince people you are an engineer?

A =person= cannot be libeled, under any meaning of the term, if their identity is not known.  There is no such thing as "generic libel".

Sheesh.

Likewise, a person cannot be libeled, under any meaning of the term, if there is no =harm=.

An libelous act cannot be a =question=, it must be a statement of fact, which is clearly not a statement of opinion.  For example, asking someone "Have you stopped beating your wife?" is not a libelous statement, because it isn't a STATEMENT OF FACT, that a person has ever beaten their wife.

This is what a libelous statement looks like:

It is a statement which meets this definition:

For me to sue you, I'd have to show "actual harm".  As I suspect no one here believes a word you say, I'd have to show that your false and malicious claim that I am "an admitted internet stalker within the common meaning of that term" resulted in something other than a good chuckle.

For you to sue me, you'd have to show that a question is a statement.  Which it isn't.

Now for another question -- is your real name Matt Giwer?

For some reason people have been questioning my assertion of Jews originally being anti-zionist.

original.antiwar.com/krasnow/2012/01/08/the-world-for-israel/

At the heart was presentation of a new book,

, written by Jack Ross and published by Potomac Books. Ross, of Brooklyn, N.Y., graduated from

in 2006. Since 2005, he has been writing for

,

, and

.

As the book’s caption says, dramatic changes have been taking place in the attitudes of American Jews toward Israel and Zionism. At no time since the founding of the State of Israel in 1948 has there been such disenchantment with Israel and Zionism. The role the Israel lobby played in the Iraq War and the “global war on terror,” as well as Israel’s attacks on Lebanon and Gaza, made large swaths of the American Jewish community question Israel’s foreign policy and its Zionist ideology.

The history of Jewish anti-Zionism in America predates the founding of Israel. Ross’s hero is Elmer Berger, a Reform Jewish rabbi (1908 –1996) who was one of the founders and first director of the American Council for Judaism (ACJ), which took a strongly anti-Zionist stance at its founding in 1942. Berger resigned from the ACJ in 1968, but he continued to fight via American Jewish Alternatives to Zionism, an organization he led until he died in 1996.

Ross says his own discovery of the anti-Zionist heritage of America was “a revelation.” He praises Berger’s mentor, the father of American Reform Judaism, Isaac Mayer Wise, who in 1900 denounced the nascent Zionist movement as “a prostitution of Israel’s holy cause to a madman’s dance of unsound politicians.”

The forum’s panel included Ambassador Andrew Killgore, publisher of The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs; Allan Brownfeld, a former member of President Ronald Reagan’s transition team who now writes for The American Council on Judaism (ACJ); Josh Ruebner, national advocacy director of the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation; and Jon Utley, associate publisher of The American Conservative magazine.

Killgore recalled his friendship with the rabbi. “Elmer and I were in agreement,” he said, that “Hitler’s persecution of European Jewry was being cynically exploited by the Zionists to further their own cause.” In the 1960s, said Killgore, the rabbi was tireless in explaining to U.S. diplomats dealing with the Middle East that “Judaism’s basic values could not be reconciled with disregard for the rights of the Palestinians upon whose lands the new Jewish state had been created.”

The forum was sponsored by the Freda Utley Foundation and Fran Griffin, founder of the Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation, which hosts a number of conservative authors, including several Jews. FGF’s mission is to educate leaders and the public on the need to preserve Western civilization.

Speaker after speaker praised Ross’s book as an act of scholarly perseverance and civic courage. The book also won the praise of such scholars as John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, co-author of the 2006 book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. Though he was not present at the forum, Professor Mearsheimer sent his comments, calling the work an “important book for anyone interested in understanding the complex history of how American Jews have related to the State of Israel.”

Actually, anti-Zionism in the United States has a long history. Among the several Reform rabbis who founded the American Council for Judaism, Berger is the best-known because he dedicated his whole life to the struggle to free U.S. foreign policy from the grip of Zionists. Whereas Berger’s anti-Zionism was rooted in Reform Judaism, his modern followers are not the only American Jews who oppose Zionist Israel. There are the radical pro-socialist leftists who want to make Israel a binational Jewish-Arab state. And there is the Neturei Karta movement of Orthodox Haredi Jews who call for a peaceful dismantling of Israel because, in their view, Jews are commanded not to have their own state until the coming of the Messiah.

Zionists, on the other hand, either reject or don’t care for the spiritual, eschatological, and metaphysical dimensions of Judaism. Theirs is a quasi-religious ideology that aims at purely political, materialist, territorial, and economic goals. As Brownfeld pointed out, true “Judaism is centered on the worship of God, not the idolatry or worshiping of any political entity.” He agreed with Ross that “the essence of Judaism is not in the ‘national narrative’ … but rather in … the prophets, who spoke out against the kings and priests who corrupted the nation and the people.”

Josh Ruebner noted that the more Israel oppresses Palestinians, the more young American Jews question the Israel lobby and the right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu. Desperate to ensure support for Israel, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) pays for “birthright Israel” trips for Americans. But the majority of young Jews enjoy their American birthright, as they abhor the fact that since its inception Israel has relied on violence in pursuit of its goals in the Middle East.

“The façade of Jewish unanimity that AIPAC likes to project will not last forever,” said Ruebner. His organization is an umbrella for over 380 U.S. groups that aim to end the Israeli occupation of Palestine. They campaign for Boycott, Disinvestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israeli interests in the U.S.

Though originally indifferent to religion, Zionist political ideology now likes to dress up Israel’s territorial ambitions in religious garb. This hypocrisy, however, backfired as it inspired the struggle of Palestinian Arabs, both Muslim and Christian, against dispossession, discrimination, and humiliation inside and outside of Israel.

In fact, some observers have described Israel as an apartheid state. Jimmy Carter, the 39th president of the United States and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for helping negotiate peace between Israel and Egypt, spelled out the stark choice Israel now faces in his book Palestine: Peace or Apartheid.

Zionist claims on Jerusalem as an exclusive capital of Israel have inflamed anti-Israeli and anti-American passions in all Muslim countries. It has helped the fanatical jihadists win the hearts and minds of millions of Muslims who came to mistrust their moderate and secular politicians for their failure to defend Muslim rights to Jerusalem, or Al-Quds, as sacred to their cultural tradition.

As an exclusive capital of Israel, Jerusalem is an abomination to Muslims and Christians alike. It is also abhorrent to those religious and secular Jews who are proud that Judaism set high ethical standards for its Christian and Islamic offshoots. Now divided and sectored, Jerusalem ought to be a universal monument to religious tolerance and brotherhood under the auspices of the United Nations. Only then could it fulfill its prophesied role as a source of unity for mankind.

A hotbed of hatred, mistrust, and war in the Middle East, Israel also sets a bad example for right-wing demagogues in Europe and the United States who clamor for getting tough on Muslim and other immigrants, just as the Israelis were in their Operation Cast Lead against the Gaza Strip. It is noteworthy that the Labor Party youth group that the Norwegian right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik attacked on July 22, 2011, expressed support for the BDS campaign against Israel.

Albert Rosenblatt, a poet and journalist who came to the forum from New York, suggested it’s not enough for American Jews to be “anti,” be it anti-Zionist, anti-Israel, or anti–American Empire. “Don’t we need to say what we are FOR?” Several people responded that they do not necessarily question Israel’s right to exist, but they want to have its policy revised in such a way that it would become not “a Jewish state,” but a normal country.

Since Jon Utley mentioned my role in finding the grave of his Jewish father, Arkady Berdichevsky, who was executed in the USSR during mass purges of the “Trotskyites,” I felt I had to speak too. Referring to Jon’s article published in 2005 in The Freeman and later turned into a film,  Return to the Gulag: Jon Utley’s Search for His Father, I thanked him for introducing me to the story of Rabbi Berger as a fellow dissident, just as Jon and I have been.

In my own comments, I noted that when I came to the United States in 1966 on an invitation from the University of Chicago, I didn’t find many Zionists on or off campus. My main concern was that too many of my colleagues and students were either pro-Soviet or soft on Communism. With all respect due to Rabbi Berger, I take exception to his illusions about the USSR as the land of liberty for the Jews. Communism was good neither for Jews nor Muslims nor Russians, especially the religious ones. As a totalitarian ideology, Communism was hostile to all free spirits, even the atheists who were not of the Marxist-Leninist stripe.

Zionism was not in vogue then in the United States. The predominant concern was not with the fate of Israel but with making sure we didn’t irritate the USSR in Vietnam and elsewhere, lest a nuclear war be unleashed. Sometimes, I felt I was just about the only Zionist in Chicago, and I’m a Gentile to boot. I knew Soviet propaganda manipulated Palestinians for geopolitical advantage.

The main significance of this forum is that we let the world know that there are many courageous and righteous Jews who are not Zionists. By honoring the memory of Rabbi Berger we inflict a blow not only to Zionists, but also to those who lump all Jews into one homogeneous group that rushes from one extreme to another, from Communist internationalism, which cares for neither religion nor nationality, to Zionist nationalism. Israel’s leaders profess to care for one religion and one nationality. In fact, they have but one self-serving goal: to perpetuate their own power at any cost, even at great risk to the rest of humanity.

We broke for refreshments and fresh efforts to figure out, face to face, what’s going on in Israel, the United States, and the world. The foremost topic was: Will Israel attack Iran? Will the United States allow it to happen? Will we facilitate the attack?

Nobody knew the answer, but the concern itself showed how far the Zionist regime was ready to take the whole world for the sake of its own survival.

Lately, this concern has spiked. I have already posted a report about Russian troops in the Caucasus being put on high alert in case an Israeli attack triggers warfare along Iran’s borders with Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan.

It was also reported, or rather, underreported, that on Dec. 16 President Barack Obama met behind closed doors with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak. The meeting was held in the outskirts of Washington, D.C., at the Gaylord Hotel, National Harbor, Maryland. It focused on the issue of a U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran.

Since Obama has already said he takes “no options off the table,” one might suspect, as Michel Chossudovsky of Global Research does, that the attack on Iran could include the use of tactical bunker-buster nuclear weapons that only the United States has and that Israel may request to make the attack effective. These bunker busters have an explosive capacity between one third and six times that of the Hiroshima bomb.

Most fittingly, at least, in the popular psyche, 2012 is the year of Armageddon. Fiat justitia, pereat mundus, “let justice be done even if the world shall perish”: this was one of the philosopher Immanuel Kant’s maxims. Whether this Latin motto stems from ancient Rome or Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I (1503-1564), its grave implications are no longer philosophical. Nor are they metaphorical.

Whatever pretext Israel and the United States (for consistency) might find for the war they threaten, at stake is the existence of the world as we know it. Even a triumph of their justitia may turn utterly hollow, for there might be no people to celebrate it. So the real question that Jews and non-Jews alike face today is: Is the world for Israel or are Jews for the world? We know how Rabbi Berger would have answered.

You can slander and liable an individual, it all depends on degree of the public nature of the individual. If the individual is not well known and you deliberately lie about them that standard is a lot lower. If however, they are a public figure, it is a much higher standard to prove.

Having said that, government law should protect everyone for discrimination such as at the workplace or pay. But you CANNOT defame an entire group of people. That is absurd. You have to protect the bitching of all citizens even if that bitching is bigoted and aimed at your label, ANY LABEL.

FOR EXAMPLE ONLY

Noony can say "Fuck Zionists"

You can say "Fuck Muslims"

And I can say "Fuck all religion"

Noony can say "All Jews are scum"

You can say "All Muslims are scum"

I can say "All religious people are scum"

ALL OF THAT IS LEGAL

What is not legal FOR EXAMPLE ONLY

If Noony said "Go kill all Jews"

If you said "Go kill all Muslims"

Or I said, "Go kill all religious people"

That is a call to violence. But that would also be the same as FOR EXAMPLE ONLY

Someone said "Kill my wife, I want the insurance money"

Or, "Kill my business rival, he is steeling my customers"

Or, "Kill that gay man"

(end example)

I don't like laws or lawsuits that attempt to protect an entire label from blasphemy. Blasphemy is neither liable or slander or defamation. It is merely saying "I don't like those people, or I don't like that claim".

Bottom line, whatever laws we have have to be neutral. They have to protect everyone's civil rights, but they also have to protect everyone's right to bitch and even offend.

Do not try to sell me the powers on that side are secular and value pluralism. That is a bunch of crap. Go read "End of Faith" by Sam Harris. The opening of that book is typical of the mindset of the people who blow themselves up. To make the absurd claim that it Islam does not play a role in suicide bombing IS FLAT OUT CRAP!

Hamass is a Muslim organization, not a secular one. No Jew or atheist would be able to get any form of political power in their ranks.

AND I WOULDN'T GIVE a damn if it were all atheists and no Muslims fighting over property rights. But you are lying to me flat out trying to say that Palestinians are not ruled by Muslims.

The length of this conflict negates "I was here first". that argument has a shelf life. Just like it would be absurd to expect me to give back land to Native Americans.

That conflict IS about Jews and Muslims and always has been, long before you or I were born. There is no damned conspiracy going on here. Your "property rights" distraction does not change that Muslims and Jews have been fighting over that area long before WW2.

NOW even if I agreed with you which I don't, Your problem and theirs is the same regardless. More of the same is why the sandbox is swimming in the urine of tribalism, regardless of religion or property rights. As long as you make that the issue instead of ALL human suffering the issue, neither of you will have peace.

STOP LIVING IN THE PAST! There isn't a thing you can do about it. What you will do is perpetuate the worst our species has to offer by clinging to the "virtue of the oppressed" crap.

You have never answered my question and you wont because you know you are wrong.

WOULD..............WOULD WOULD WOULD Palestine write a secular constitution protecting political and religious freedom and the protection of dissent? At best their democracy would be mob rule by vote. It would still set up a political and religious litmus test for anyone to have a voice in any government they set up.

THE ANSWER IS NO! And you damned well know it. So your "property rights" "poor me" crap wont get my any sympathy knowing what they would set up if they could.

Now, YOU and THEY, like I said, could very quickly take the wind out of the sales of Israel's land grab, by denouncing theocracy and an Islamic state. THEN AND ONLY THEN will you get my support.

ATTITUDE CHANGE.

I don't care if you want to falsely make this about just boarders and deny that they have religious rulers. I DON'T CARE. What matters is the future, not the past. You want my support, I want proof that any future state will be inclusive in their constitution under whatever government they set up. Until they make an official public decree protecting the rights of non-Muslims I cannot support any Palestinian state.

A PUBLIC GOVERNMENT DOCUMENT THAT PROTECTS A SECULAR GOVERNMENT, PROTECTS DISSENT, PROTECTS THE RIGHTS OF MINORITIES. PROTECTS A FREE PRESS.

Not the same crap Christians try to pull here, "Christian nation" we wont hurt you as long as you accept that you are merely a guest , even if you are a citizen.

Whatever they set up has to protect the rights of non-Muslims and protect the rights of non-Muslims to compete politically. Setting up a mob rule state by vote does not mean it will protect the rights of all who live under that government.

Here is how you can get my support.

1. Skip the labels

2. Don't cherry pick the past to suit your own desires

3. Look to the future by recognizing all human suffering, not just the suffering of your side

4. Demand that if Palestine wants a state, that it has to have a Constitution that protects the rights of all, not just the rights of the majority.

WHEN you can get a majority of Palestinians to do that, then and only then, will you get my support.

Get this through your head. No one is denying land is being taken. You however are ignoring WILLFULLY the history of this conflict and refuse to accept what Palestinians would set up if given a state.

It simply is not worth supporting them knowing what kind of state they would set up if they did get all the land back.

The would simply go from being abused to becoming the abuser. When Palestine takes donations from Saudi Arabia A MUSLIM STATE through a telethon like a charity to give money to suicide bombers families who are MUSLIM, I find it hard to believe that it is merely about boarders.

IT IS A LIE that it is merely about borders. Hamass is NOT a secular organization, it is a MUSLIM organization and that is who your majority elected.

"We want our land back". And "they" take it from you because they too "want it back" because both of you CLAIM "I was here first."

DONT CARE. You are no better than those you accuse.

I see nothing from you personally or Palestine as a whole that would give me one indication that if they got what they wanted they would give equal rights in government and politics to non-Muslims, politically or religiously.

You are both stuck in the past and both of you want the land and neither are going to stop this crap because you wont let go of the past.

If in 60,000 years both Islam and Jewish faiths get treated like myths, and got replaced with another "boarder war" between future populations, my attitude would be the same. HOW are you(insert label here) going to treat minorities and political dissent? If they could not answer that, I wouldn't help them. Because it would be as stupid as getting in between two pit bulls.

You are letting your REAL empathy cloud your reason just like when Furry talks about those she has known affected by bombings and rockets. And I wouldn't care if you were both atheists and this was merely a property dispute.

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. Until you get that you will not understand why I cannot support you.

"My land" is short sighted in evolution, when we all die. Powers shifts and time change. To maximize human dignity and common interest there has to be a shelf life to "mine".

Even outside the issue of borders, there has been a history of some sorts that a once private figure who did something notable, once a couple generations passed and that person, or invention was so much a part of culture, the personal rights of the original family were given up to the property of the people.

It would be like a genetic descendant of Jefferson demanding royalties to his private letters or use of his name.

There can be no winners in a war rooted in the past making claims about a past neither can change.

Muslims in Egypt would not give back the rights of the Pyramids their ancestors eventually took control over if someone gave DNA evidence that they were directly related to them.

And Hebrews were not the first people in our evolution to occupy the "Fertile Crescent". Furry would not give back that land to anyone who could genetically link themselves to the prior Canaanites.

"My land" has a shelf life. Just like both Furry and Noony when I point out that Native Americans had their land stolen from them, dodge the issue.

Fisk is generally reliable and he used the go to source for the information putting the fraction at 70%. You do realize that causing owners to be absent under pain of summary execution is theft under color of law.

I think thieves should be required to return stolen property. That is hardly a new principle in custom or in law. If they innocently bought stolen property their complaint with the criminal that misrepresented the property as his to sell.

Let me repeat, my standard of justice for the Palestinians is exactly the same that Jews and the government of Israel have demand from Germany, Poland, Hungary and other countries in matters related to WWII. If one is just both are just. If Palestinians have no claims then Jews have no claims.

=====

As to wikipedia, you can do better than that. It is suitable for high school level information just as are all encylopedias. None are suitable for college level work.

The distinction between all and 70% is for purists. Some other methods of acquisition, including fraudulent bills a sale, account for much of it. Declation of public land is another. It continues to this day in occupied Jerusalem and the West Bank. Any such declaration in occupied territory was determined to be a hanging offense at Nuremberg. All occupied territories may only be administered for the benefit of the occupied people save as a strict military necesity.

Back before the peace treaty with Jordan all the squattertowns were declared to be military necessities. After the peace treaty Israel changed the lie.

No blame just not really the place to start. Note the expansion of "facts" in wikipedia I added. Only Israel and izziehuggers disagree with those facts. The izzies like to say the land is disputed. However, like an argument, it takes two to make a dispute. No one disputes the issue with the izzies. It is occupied territory, period. The currently popular lie that replaced the previous lie is still a lie.

You man you would not force thieves to return stolen property? You buy stolen property the police take it from you. You have no right to the property of others regardless of how it came into your possession. Embargoing oil to Israel is not violent. They can decide to return stolen property after the lights go out. They can certainly have a reasonable time to leave as long as they start paying reasonable rent to the owners. They can get the money by not paying mortgages and rents to the criminals who were part of the criminal enterprise that got them into the mess. The victims of the Jews are the ones with the moral rights in this case. Thieves have no rights.

Well, to me, 30% seems like a pretty big difference. But whatever, I still need to read more about the issue anyway.

As long as it's not violent, I don't have a problem supporting it. Thieves may not have moral rights, but they still have legal rights. Even convicted felons have a lot of the same legal rights as everyone else (in the US, at least).

Nony is not an anti-Semite, he's an anti-Zionist. Not all Jews are Zionists.

No, he's pretty much a garden-variety anti-Semite.  Anti-Semites try to wrap themselves with a thin veneer of "anti-Zionism", but he also argues -- counter to biological evidence -- that modern day Jews aren't the "real" Jews.  I forget who posted the "If Jews were really Jews they'd look like this" challenge, but my brother looks enough like Bob Dylan, and Bob Dylan looks enough like that image (horrid as it may be ...) that he's just plain wrong.

Years ago I ran across a woman from Iraq.  Based on "ethnic" characteristics, I look more like her than the countries my ancestors came from more recently.  Which is to say, he's just plain wrong.

The bigger "hahahaha" is that many Israelis are able to freely mingle with Arabs in the Middle East, which really messes with their heads.

Arabs are our closest genetic relatives.

Just like the bible says

For the purpose of answering your question, "Yes".

However, they aren't actually the same thing, but think of that as an "advanced topic".

                     No but Tom Brady  beating the crap outta  bejesus lovin' Tebow   IS the REAL thing. Bwahahahahahaha!!!!!

In non-capital crimes the statute of limitations only applies to those discovered after the limit. After discovery of the crime there is no time limit. Zionist thefts have been well documented since the moment they were committed. Just look to the legal documentation of title transfer in Israel for all the evidence needed.

It is difficult to imagine you are really as dumb/ignorant as you are posting.

I have cited several prominent jewish authors who have documented the Ashkenazi, the eastern European Jews, being converts from the now defunct Khazar empire. Were those Jews antisemites or is it just antisemitic to cite them?

As to who Robert Zimmerman, aka Bob Dylan, looks like, quite Eastern European not like the Palestinians, Muslim, Christian and Jewish, who are not of Khazar origin.

More interesting is your ignorance of the subject while at the same time willing to tell gratuitous lies about anyone whom you dislike, including Turks. It is difficult to keep lies straight. Assuming you mean "many [jewish] Israelis" then given your false genetic claims ALL of them should be able to "freely mingle" save the Ashkenazi are not. All Sephardim are so able as are the native Muslims and Christians. The Ashkenazim cannot. They look too German western Mongol actually save for the interbreeding with Germans and Slavs.

For the purpose of answering your question, "Yes"

"Torah" can also include the entire Tanakh, which is what Christians call the "Old Testament", as well as the texts and oral traditions you mentioned -- Mishnah, Talmud, midrashim, etc.

Well, it's been a LONG LONG time, so of course the original manuscripts are lost.

First off, it really isn't that much information, in terms of what was written down, and the rest was passed down orally.  If you'd like to see a fairly recent example, look at Muslims and how well they manage to memorize the entire Qur'an.  A Qur'an, in the Arabic script is about 10% longer than the five books of the Torah, so it can be done.

Secondly, Hebrew is an interesting language in that there are no numbers in Hebrew.  Instead, every letter has a numerical value.  The first letter, alef, has the value "1", bet has the value "2", and so on through the last (tav) which has the value 400.  The values are 1 to 9, then 10 to 90, then 100 to 400, and that covers the 22 letters of the alef-bet.

This brings up something called Gematria, which is a sort of Hebrew numerology.  If you start calculating numerical values for letters, you can wind up with a short-hand notation that can be used to describe an entire text, to verify that the text was transmitted correctly -- the length of a text and the sum of the values in a text, taken together, provide a basic "check" that the text was transmitted correctly.  The simplest form of number is something called a checksum, and they've been used since ancient times to make sure the Torah stays "correct".

I think so, but I've not read it.

No, it's because "Torah" is the name of the first five books written by Moses, the entire Tanakh, the combination of the Oral and Written revelations from G-d, and the entire corpus of Jewish religious literature.

Go read this, then decide if a simple "yes" or "no" answer was appropriate --

http://www.answers.com/topic/torah

There =is= a reason I ignore you for the most part.  I hope that whatever you get out of the behavior that has caused me to ignore you is rewarding.

Because it seemed like an answer that would only lead to more questions!

Need I point out that is the answer I gave you, an answer pussy said was an advanced topic and then told you it was more than the first five books? Do I have to? Do not forget to visit www.rationalresponders.com/forum/30998 and see what else the pussy is up to.

I don't care if you appreciate me or not. I just want to be sure you know who you are dealing with.

The only modest difference is 3, however the written religious law in the first five books, Torah == Law.

If you really want to go into oral tradition that was invented by the rabbis who first appear in Judaism after the destruction of the temple which caused unemployed priests to call themselves rabbis. They invented the idea of oral law as that also first appears with them. Consider it a way for the unemployed and superfluous to avoid gainful employment. Over the centuries the Karaites who reject the idea of oral law and rabbinical tyranny have nearly been hunted to extinction by the rabbinical sects.

So it comes down to being gullible enough to accept the word of power hungry ex-priests as to whether there is more than the law that is written.

The existence of an "oral tradition" or "oral law" is trivially obvious.

Let's consider, briefly, the laws of Shechita, which deal with the requirements for slaughtering an animal.  The "written law" is covered in Deut. 12:21 and a few following verses, and it basically says "Kill it and let it's blood drain out onto the ground, and don't consume the blood."  That's it -- it doesn't say =how= to kill the animal, =how= to let the blood drain out, etc.

So, you're a good Jewish goat herder and it's time to turn a goat into dinner.  You've got a goat, you've got a knife, you've got ... a Torah scroll out in the barn with you?  No, of course not.

Okay, so you have what?  You have what you're parents told you about the proper way to kill that goat.

You might say "Well, what if I want to do it differently?", that case is handled in Deut 17:11 and following -- if it's a difficult question (like, how to properly kill that goat), the Torah says that we are supposed to ask certain people who are given the authority to answer such questions (originally Moses, then he divided that up to various people among the tribes).

So, if you accept that you can't run off to the Torah every time you have a question, you have to accept that there must have been an oral tradition which you learned so you don't have to run off to the Torah every 10 or 15 minutes.  And if you don't buy that rationale, then the Torah is explicit -- if you have a hard question, ask someone who has the authority to give you answers.

When it comes to trivial ... The oral law is self-reflexive in claiming it came from Moses. Moses is a myth. Therefore the oral law is a myth.

QED