Avram in MD,
1.) You said “I disagree. The conditions required to come together for such an event are so unlikely, that I find it exceptionally improbable that a woman was ever lashed by a kosher Beis Din for such a reason.”
Where do you get all the “conditions” you keep mentioning? The Rambam seems to be saying that she could be lashed at the discretion of a Dayan: the exact words are “??? ?? ??? ?? ????? ????? ????? ????”.
2.) You said ” Helping someone to wash most likely was considered a basic courtesy.”
Even if I grant you that it was considered “basic courtesy” to help someone wash his feet and was not something degrading at all (and I’m not at all sure that this is true) change it to something that would be considered common courtesy today and my point would still stand.
3.) You said “At most the Raavad is saying, “if she doesn’t wash his face (e.g., do what is halachically required for a wife to do), he is within his rights to ask her to leave without necessarily beginning divorce proceedings.”
As I said above I am not sure exactly what the Raavid says because I do not have the text in front of me. However even if he said what you say he says, throwing a woman into the street with no money, food or personal belongings is practically the same thing, especially hundreds of years ago.
4.) You said “If Jews in Eretz Yisroel began violating halachos (e.g., shmitta, Shabbos, forbidden relationships), then they would lose Hashem’s protection and become vulnerable to attack from the nations around them. Therefore, violating these mere “tenets” could very well get innocents killed.”
That is a BELIEF. In order to justify causing someone harm it has to be a proven fact that what the person is doing will cause harm. This is why we say Muslims killing people is immoral even though they believe they have the right to do so, or that someone burning a witch would be immoral even though they really believe that the witch is casting spells and hurting people.
5.)You said “Also, who’s to say anyone has a right to kill another human, even if that human also killed? Exile him to an island where he can no longer harm anyone!”
I would tend to agree with this statement. The argument against it would be that the death penalty is necessary to deter future crime.