God's law or private law?

[The Grand Nudger]

Oh god, please no, having a conversation with a muslim about contradictions is worse than a root canal. They won't be difficult to find, and finding them won't cause a given muslim to decide that their religion is, thusly, "fake". The real kicker, at least from my point of view as a member of the unafflicted....is that nothing prevents a religion from being contradictory. Nothing at all. No amount of internal or external contradiction would render any religion any less real, and no amount of internal or external consistency would make a religion any more real. The whole bit is just another self inflicted wound.

I can help you out with one thing, though. The idea that women should only be treated by women, more broadly that women should only ever be in the company of other women, is common to many cultures all across time and geography. It's an attempt to protect their perceived value as a commodity, through sexual purity. It is amusing that people with these sorts of beliefs shoot themselves in the foot, as you note, by setting up a situation where there would be no female doctors - but as I just explained above, religious beliefs don't have to be consistent, and they very often end up biting their holders in the ass through unintended or unconsidered consequences - just as any claim by you that a real religion would have to be free of contradiction would bite you in the ass.

Here again, you offer a great argument for why preventing females from going to universities is stupid, and whether or not god wants people to do that is entirely irrelevant to that point, don't you think? No girls in school, no female doctors to cater to their religious sensibilities.

As far as whether or not I lump you all into the same basket. Sure, particularly with respect to the accusation you levy towards them. That they're not doing what god wants them to do, they're doing what they want to do. Well, so are you with respect to your own beliefs, and in precisely the same way. None of you are doing anything a god wants you to do...and at this point it's impossible for me not to ask you the following question about all of this. Suppose, if you will, that you opened up magic book and it said "do not let girls go to school". Would you prevent them from going to school on magic books say so? What if the archangel gabriel came down and told you, directly, not to let girls go to school?