Answer

Good, in a new thread there’s room to address these points.
First, let me preface things and clarify my claim more fully. In one of the early issues of Tzohar, part of a book was brought that contained a critique by Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook of the New Testament. I read it and pinched myself to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating. I had never seen such absurd things in my life. In principle, he raised difficulties on verses in the New Testament from the “Ketzot” as if it were a Talmudic text to be reconciled by fine legal analysis (that’s a metaphor, though I think at least once it was literally so). The contradictions he found there were far smaller than the contradictions others find in our own sources. So what’s the difference? The question is whether you’re inside or outside. If you have empathy for the Jewish-halakhic tradition, you will reconcile those contradictions in ways that will seem strained to others, but for you they will be satisfactory. Because you have a basic trust that this comes from Heaven and is true, and that there certainly can’t be nonsense there. But if you’re looking from the outside, all of it will seem like ridiculous forced answers. So critiques like these are pointless. By the way, I’m not speaking on a subjective level. In my view both sides are right. Someone who has concluded that the tradition in question is trustworthy is justified in being willing to accept strained reconciliations. After all, the alternative is that this tradition is talking nonsense. And that is the meaning given by the medieval authorities (Rishonim) to the Mishnah in Avot, “Judge every person favorably.”
The same applies to criticism of other positions and beliefs. When it is done from the outside, everything looks terribly clear and logical and they look like a restless herd of fools. But if you ask them, then at least for some of the things you will find an answer (which will probably look strained to you, as above). Not everyone there is a complete fool, and from my experience Tamar isn’t either. I asked her some of these questions, and with most of them I was left feeling that I disagree and sometimes that it’s an absurd approach. But it’s clear to me that someone on the inside sees things differently.
Now you’ll understand that the questions I asked you — and after all I wrote to you that I agree with most of your claims — were meant to reflect to you the way others could challenge you. Your excuses will look to them the way the Reform excuses look to you.
Beyond that, as I wrote to you, I’m not their representative on earth. They are alive and around, and if this really interests you, go ask them/her. It’s like learning about Christianity from all the writings of Abraham Korman and from the Disputation of Nachmanides. You understand that that’s not serious.
Now to my questions/your questions:
1. Capital punishments. I already mentioned that these were abolished even while there still were ordained judges, once murderers became numerous. Is there a halakhic source for this? So were the Sages also Reform? You’re satisfied with the answer that when murderers became numerous the court could uproot something from the Torah by passive non-action (as far as I remember, with no source at all for that principle). You understand that from the outside this looks like a made-up excuse. They simply didn’t want to kill too much, even though the Torah commands it. Not to mention that the Sages occasionally uprooted things even through active measures, while they themselves write that there is no permission at all to do that. So again, are they Reform? The answer is yes, if you look from the outside. You and I are looking from the inside, and therefore it is obvious to us that there is internal logic here, and that is enough for us.
And regarding ordination itself — after all, there is the enactment of acting as the agents of the earlier ordained judges, which itself is nothing but an absurd invention (to outside eyes). Since when have we heard of agents without an appointment, or an agent after the principal has died? There is a lone view of the Ketzot HaHoshen in Maimonides, dismissed scornfully by later authorities as nonsense with no basis. And if they already invoked acting as their agents, why not do so for capital cases as well? That would be a great need, to prevent murder, no? Rather, the Reformer will tell you, they wanted not to kill (just as that was also the policy when there still were ordained judges — a destructive, death-dealing court), and they anchored this in formalistic pilpulim. Even in the period of ordained judges they used those same Reform-style pilpulim — for example, requiring the wound to be exactly where the sword entered, and so on. So were they Reform or not? It all depends whether you’re inside or outside.
2. The same is true regarding Amalek, where we find all sorts of limitations that have no real source. From the Bible it emerges quite simply that one is to kill their infants and women, from youth to old age. But the Sages, and even more so Maimonides, restricted this very sharply. So are they also Reform? Moreover, you understand that if this were to happen in our day (and the Reform movement, let me remind you, did not operate in Temple times but in modern times), we would come up with all sorts of pilpulim about how our hands are not strong enough, and we would run away from it as fast as possible, with procedural evasions, so that we wouldn’t have to carry it out in practice — even on a deserted island. So the Reform people are simply putting it honestly on the table. Again, I do not mean to say they are right, but to illustrate for you the external point of view and your unbalanced perspective in this discussion.
3. About “lower them and do not raise them,” there is no need to elaborate. A thoroughly Reform invention. There is no one today who knows how to prove properly, beliefs held under compulsion, our hands are not strong enough, a captured infant, and so on. All these are arguments that I personally accept, but from an outside perspective they look no better than the Reform arguments look in your eyes.
By the way, someone just posted here a link to an article by Joshua Berman, who presents biblical law as common law rather than statutory law (in my opinion, not a precise term). Interesting to read and get an impression of the “Reformism.”
https://rationalbelief.org.il/%D7%A4%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%A4%D7%99%D7%94%D7%95%D7%A9%D7%A2-%D7%91%D7%A8%D7%9E%D7%9F-%D7%A1%D7%AA%D7%99%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%AA-%D7%91%D7%99%D7%A7%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%AA-%D7%94%D7%9E%D7%A7%D7%A8%D7%90-%D7%9C/    
4. In general, my attitude toward all these commandments is described in column 15 and in many other places here on the site. In my view they are valid, but in practice most of them will not be carried out (just as they were not carried out in the past). As long as you are not actually living these things and required to carry them out, as long as you are just doing pilpul in the study hall, you stick to Jewish law in its statutory written form. I faithfully promise you that when you are required to carry them out in practice, you will be a first-rate Reformer.
And a reversed parable for this appears in the Mishnah at the end of chapter 1 of Makkot, in the dispute between Rabban Gamliel and Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Tarfon: if we had been in the Sanhedrin, no person would ever have been executed. They were in the study hall (neither of the two had served in the Sanhedrin) and they engaged in pilpul and saved the whole world and his wife from death. But Rabban Gamliel was head of the Sanhedrin and responsible for order. He could not allow murderers to multiply in Israel.
I brought another example of this in my article on a scriptural decree:

מהי ‘גזירת הכתוב’?[1] (עיון בדין עדים זוממים)