Disputed Statements

Miracles, Doctrines

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Status Within the Tradition

Currently States Genuinely disputed within this tradition

Augustine held a miracle is not contrary to nature but contrary to what is known of nature, making it a fact about the observer, while Aquinas defined it more strictly as an effect exceeding the power of the whole created order. David Hume's 1748 essay Of Miracles then argued, on evidentiary grounds, that no testimony can establish a miracle occurred, since it is always more probable a witness is mistaken or lying than that a law of nature failed, an argument contested continuously since without either side conceding. Within Christianity a further, still-live dispute divides cessationists, who hold the apostolic age's miraculous gifts ceased with it, from continuationists, whose position underlies the Pentecostal and charismatic movements. The Encyclopedia of Religion, edited by Mircea Eliade and, in its second edition, Lindsay Jones (Macmillan Reference, 2005), records this evidentiary and definitional history.

Source Encyclopedia of Religion, Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.) tier 1

Mircea Eliade, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns How Its Legacy Is Contested

Currently States His interwar sympathy with the Romanian Legionary movement, and his silence about it after the war, are documented. What that means for the work is argued in opposite directions.

Mac Linscott Ricketts's Mircea Eliade: The Romanian Roots, 1907-1945 (East European Monographs, 1988) documents Eliade's early involvement with the Romanian Iron Guard and fascist movement alongside his later, highly influential theory of religion as encounter with the sacred outside ordinary history. Ricketts's biographical method traces both strands through Eliade's own contemporary writings, and scholars reading that same documented record split into named camps: some treat the politics and the comparative theory of religion as separable intellectual products of the same man, while others read the theory's own anti-historical strand, its treatment of sacred time as escaping ordinary historical causation, as continuous with the political commitments of his youth rather than independent of them.

Source Mircea Eliade: The Romanian Roots, 1907-1945, Mac Linscott Ricketts tier 1

Miri and piri, Doctrines

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Status Within the Tradition

Currently States Genuinely disputed within this tradition

According To Sikhism

J. S. Grewal's The Sikhs of the Punjab (Cambridge University Press, 1998) documents that the Sixth Guru, Guru Hargobind, instituted the doctrine of miri and piri, wearing two swords for temporal and spiritual authority, a historical event Grewal treats as affirmed. What it licenses politically is disputed within the Panth, sharply so since the Indian army's 1984 assault on the Golden Temple, between those who read it as a warrant for Sikh political sovereignty and those who read it as a claim about holding the two spheres together in one life; Grewal's historical method traces both readings to the same doctrinal event without adjudicating between them.

Source J.S. Grewal, The Sikhs of the Punjab (New Cambridge History of India II.3), J. S. Grewal tier 1

Miserere mei, Deus (Allegri), Musical Works

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Release Year

Currently States 1630

No exact composition year survives in the documentary record; scholarship places it during the papacy of Urban VIII, 1623 to 1644, most often estimated to the 1630s, and 1630 is used here only as a nominal midpoint of that range, not a firm date.

Source Miserere mei, Deus (Allegri) (Wikipedia), Wikipedia contributors tier 3

Mishefa Res, Scriptures & Texts

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Canonical Status Detail

Currently States Philip G. Kreyenbroek's Yezidism: Its Background, Observances and Textual Tradition (Edwin Mellen Press, 1995) records that the Mishefa Res, the Black Book, reached Western scholarship around 1911 alongside a companion text, the Kiteba Cilwe, both recounting the community's creation account; the prevailing scholarly view Kreyenbroek sets out holds the manuscripts themselves to be productions made for the manuscript trade rather than genuine community originals, while recognising their content faithfully reflects authentic Yazidi oral tradition, so the dispute concerns the documents rather than the beliefs they record.

Source Yezidism: Its Background, Observances and Textual Tradition, Philip G. Kreyenbroek tier 1

Mishefa Res, Scriptures & Texts

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Attributed Author / Compiler

Currently States Traditionally reputed to be an authentic ancient Yazidi scripture (traditional)

Philip G. Kreyenbroek's Yezidism: Its Background, Observances and Textual Tradition, Edwin Mellen Press, 1995, examines both the Kiteba Cilwe and the Mishefa Res against the fact that Yazidism's own authoritative religious content is primarily oral, transmitted by qewwals, religious singers and reciters, rather than fixed in written scripture. Kreyenbroek's method is comparative and ethnographic: checking each written text's own transmission history, who copied, compiled or published it, and how it relates to the community's oral practice, against the oral tradition itself, and that examination does not clearly establish either document as an authentic internal scripture rather than an external compilation. Its own text states the resulting position directly, that authenticity is genuinely disputed and that the dispute itself, not the existence of the book, is the one settled fact.

Source Yezidism: Its Background, Observances and Textual Tradition, Philip G. Kreyenbroek tier 1

Mishefa Res, Scriptures & Texts

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Attributed Author / Compiler

Currently States The prevailing scholarly view holds the manuscript itself to be a production made for the manuscript trade, though its content faithfully reflects genuine Yazidi oral tradition (critical)

Philip G. Kreyenbroek's Yezidism: Its Background, Observances and Textual Tradition, Edwin Mellen Press, 1995, examines both the Kiteba Cilwe and the Mishefa Res against the fact that Yazidism's own authoritative religious content is primarily oral, transmitted by qewwals, religious singers and reciters, rather than fixed in written scripture. Kreyenbroek's method is comparative and ethnographic: checking each written text's own transmission history, who copied, compiled or published it, and how it relates to the community's oral practice, against the oral tradition itself, and that examination does not clearly establish either document as an authentic internal scripture rather than an external compilation. Its own text states the resulting position directly, that authenticity is genuinely disputed and that the dispute itself, not the existence of the book, is the one settled fact.

Source Yezidism: Its Background, Observances and Textual Tradition, Philip G. Kreyenbroek tier 1

Mithra, Deities

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Theology

Currently States Dualist: two opposed cosmic principles

Mithra is honoured within Zoroastrianism as a great yazata subordinate to Ahura Mazda, guardian of the sworn word against the lie, but the same dualist framework that sets Ahura Mazda against Angra Mainyu extends to every being in the Zoroastrian cosmos, so his theology is recorded as dualist for the same reason and on the same source, Mary Boyce's A History of Zoroastrianism (1989). A separate question, not settled here, is the relation of this Iranian Mithra to the distinct Roman mystery cult of Mithras, which Boyce and others treat as historically connected but theologically apart.

Source A History of Zoroastrianism, Mary Boyce tier 1

Mithras, Deities

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Point in Dispute

Currently States Scholars disagree over what the tauroctony actually depicts. David Ulansey and others read the scene as a star chart, casting Mithras as the constellation Perseus overturning the cosmic order marked by the astrological Age of Taurus, while most specialists, including Roger Beck in a more cautious form, treat the astral reading as suggestive rather than proven and favour older readings tied to sacrifice, salvation and seasonal renewal. No consensus exists on which interpretation is correct.

Source The Religion of the Mithras Cult in the Roman Empire, Roger Beck tier 1

Mizuko Kuyo, Rituals

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Tradition

Currently States Performed at Japanese Buddhist temples; its commercial promotion is debated within Japanese Buddhism

According To Japanese Buddhism

Mizuko kuyo is a Japanese Buddhist memorial rite for miscarried, stillborn or aborted fetuses, addressed to the mizuko, water child. Helen Hardacre's Marketing the Menacing Fetus in Japan (1997), a study of the rite's modern commercial and pastoral dimensions, documents that some temples and scholars defend it as genuine pastoral care answering real parental grief, while Hardacre's own critical account, and other scholars following it, document temples marketing the rite by invoking fear of tatari, fetal spirit retribution, a fear Hardacre argues has little basis in older Buddhist doctrine and functions commercially to generate fee-paying business. The method is documentary and ethnographic, comparing temple advertising material, pastoral counselling practice and doctrinal history against each other rather than assuming either function excludes the other. Because both the pastoral and the commercial uses are independently documented within Japanese Buddhism, sometimes at the same temple, the atlas records both positions as held within the tradition and takes no side.

Source Marketing the Menacing Fetus in Japan, Helen Hardacre tier 1

Mizuko Kuyo, Rituals

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Standing as a Comparative Category

Currently States Used, but its validity as a comparative category is disputed

According To Japan

Mizuko kuyo's standing as a subject of serious scholarship is itself divided between two readings of the same practice. Helen Hardacre's Marketing the Menacing Fetus in Japan (1997) treats the rite chiefly as a modern commercial phenomenon, tracing how postwar Japanese temples developed and marketed it using fear of fetal spirit retribution, tatari, a critical account grounded in doctrinal and historical analysis showing the rite's modern form has little precedent in older Buddhist practice. Other scholars of Japanese religion, working from ethnographic interviews with grieving parents rather than temple marketing material, read the same rite more sympathetically as a genuine and valuable pastoral response to reproductive loss regardless of its commercial packaging. The method distinguishing the two readings is which evidence base each foregrounds, doctrinal and historical analysis on one side, ethnographic attention to lived grief on the other, applied to the same rite. Because both readings appear in serious peer-reviewed scholarship, the atlas states both rather than adjudicating between them.

Source Marketing the Menacing Fetus in Japan, Helen Hardacre tier 1

Mizuko Kuyo, Rituals

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Current Status

Currently States Helen Hardacre's Marketing the Menacing Fetus in Japan (University of California Press, 1997), the standard academic study of the rite's modern history, documents that mizuko kuyo, the memorial service for children lost to miscarriage, stillbirth or abortion that spread rapidly in prominence from the 1970s, is today widely offered and widely criticised within Japanese Buddhism itself: Hardacre traces how some temples promote the rite by invoking fear of tatari, spirit retribution from an unappeased mizuko, a practice other clergy and scholars single out as exploiting grief.

According To Japanese Buddhism

Source Marketing the Menacing Fetus in Japan, Helen Hardacre tier 1

Mizuko Kuyo, Rituals

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Scholarly Standing Detail

Currently States Helen Hardacre's Marketing the Menacing Fetus in Japan (University of California Press, 1997) is itself the central document in the scholarly debate over whether mizuko kuyo's rapid rise in prominence from the 1970s reflects sincere pastoral care for grief that has few other public outlets in Japan, commercial promotion by temples that market the rite by invoking fear of tatari, spirit retribution from an unappeased mizuko, or some combination of both, a debate Hardacre's own study helped establish rather than settled.

According To Japan

Source Marketing the Menacing Fetus in Japan, Helen Hardacre tier 1

Moana (2016 Film), Screen Works

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Religious Subject Matter

Currently States Centers on Maui, a demigod of Polynesian oral tradition credited across the Pacific with pulling up islands, slowing the sun and gifting fire, here written as a boastful, comic figure who partners with the teenage Moana rather than the female deity he shares the sea voyage with in many tellings. Disney formed the Oceanic Story Trust, Pacific anthropologists, historians, fishermen and linguists who reviewed every draft across nine story versions over five years of development, and cast several voice actors of Polynesian descent.

Teresia Teaiwa, Senior Lecturer in Pacific Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, criticized Maui as written into a "buffoon" and called his costume "macabre," likening it to the historical collection of tattooed skin from deceased Pacific people. Marama Fox, co-leader of New Zealand's Maori Party, called the depiction "a little bit of cultural misappropriation." Separately, when Disney sold a children's Halloween costume replicating Maui's brown skinned, tattooed body, Chelsie Haunani Fairchild, a Native Hawaiian critic, called it "polyface" and compared it to blackface, and Tevita O. Kaili, an Oceanic anthropologist, described the underlying pattern as a dominant group taking on a marginalized culture's symbols; Disney pulled the costume from sale. None of these critics disputed that the Oceanic Story Trust consultation happened, only whether it was enough to prevent these specific choices.

Source Associated Press, "Disney's New Movie Hit Moana Criticised for Depiction of Polynesia People," 2016 tier 2

Modern Paganism, Religions

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period Start Year

Currently States 1954

Ronald Hutton's research, cited in this atlas's own description of the movement, established that Wicca and its sibling traditions are twentieth century constructions, but scholars date Modern Paganism's own beginning differently depending on whether they count eighteenth and nineteenth century Druidic and Romantic revivalism as its root or start with the movements that actually called themselves Pagan. 1954, when Gerald Gardner's Witchcraft Today brought Wicca into public view, is recorded as the point most historians treat as the effective start of Modern Paganism as a lived movement.

Source The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft, Ronald Hutton tier 1

Moha (Delusion), Vices

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period

Currently States Moha, a single Sanskrit and Pali term catalogued once across two traditions on the same principle the atlas applies to Karma, Dharma and Samsara, has two separate origin periods depending on which list it is read from: on the Buddhist side, as the deepest of the three root kleshas, it is attested in the earliest Pali Canon strata; on the Hindu side, as one of the six enemies of the arishadvarga, its framing is attested only later, in dharmashastra and epic literature by the early centuries CE. P. V. Kane's History of Dharmasastra, Volume V (Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1958) is the source for the later Hindu dating specifically.

Source History of Dharmasastra, Volume V, P. V. Kane tier 1

Moha (Delusion), Vices

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Place of Origin

Currently States Two places at once: ancient India generally, within the earliest Pali Canon strata, for the Buddhist reading as one of the three root kleshas; and India's composite, multi-regional dharmashastra and epic corpus, which fixes no single narrower place, for the later Hindu arishadvarga reading.

Source The Foundations of Buddhism, Rupert Gethin tier 1

Moinuddin Chishti, Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Historicity

Currently States Historicity debated

Carl W. Ernst and Bruce B. Lawrence's Sufi Martyrs of Love: The Chishti Order in South Asia and Beyond (Palgrave Macmillan, 2002) examine the early biography of Moinuddin Chishti through the malfuzat, the recorded-sayings literature attributed to the order's early masters. Their historical method finds several of the best known malfuzat collections are of doubtful authenticity and were produced in the fifteenth century or later, generations after Chishti's own lifetime, and that historians of the order accordingly treat the early biography as hagiographic construction serving the Ajmer shrine's authority, while devotional tradition continues to transmit the same material as biography. Nothing about Chishti's life before his arrival at Ajmer has been established from sources contemporary with him.

Source Sufi Martyrs of Love: The Chishti Order in South Asia and Beyond, Carl W. Ernst and Bruce B. Lawrence tier 1

Mokhukhu, Sacred Dances

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Religious Dimension

Currently States Reading the uniform and the stamping as a reclaiming of the migrant labourer's dress is a scholarly interpretation rather than the church's own statement of what it is doing.

Comaroff argues that Zionist practice turns an emblem of subordination into one of belonging. Anderson and others hold that treating these churches mainly as a reaction to political conditions understates how much of their worship is a positive choice about how Christians should pray. Both readings are current.

Source Body of Power, Spirit of Resistance: The Culture and History of a South African People, Jean Comaroff tier 1

Mokosh, Deities

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Associated Relic

Currently States Some scholars argue that veneration of Mokosh survived syncretically into later Slavic Orthodox popular devotion to Saint Paraskeva Pyatnitsa, whose feast day and folk cult inherited associations with spinning, wool, and women's domestic labor. This proposed continuity, argued in detail by scholars such as Boris Rybakov, rests on shared domestic and textile associations and overlapping folk customs rather than on any direct textual statement equating the two figures; other scholars regard the parallel as an appealing but unproven inference that risks projecting a pagan substrate onto what may be an independently developed Christian folk cult, so the continuity is treated as a debated hypothesis rather than an established fact.

Source Slavic Gods and Heroes, Judith Kalik and Alexander Uchitel tier 1