Disputed Statements

Religious Anti-Zionism, Doctrines

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Earliest Formulation

Currently States The Three Oaths passage in the Babylonian Talmud, tractate Ketubot 111a, is the text the religious case is chiefly argued from.

The Babylonian Talmud, tractate Ketubot 111a (Anonymous, multiple authors, 1935 Soncino edition), the text the religious anti-Zionist case is chiefly argued from, sets out the Three Oaths passage: that Israel swore not to ascend the wall by mass return by force, not to rebel against the nations, and that the nations swore not to oppress Israel excessively. Whether the passage is halakhically binding is disputed among rabbinic authorities examining the same aggadic text; religious Zionist writers have answered that it is aggadic rather than legal, that the conditions have lapsed, or that the third oath binding the nations was broken first, while religious anti-Zionist readers take it as a live prohibition. Both readings work from the same passage.

Source The Babylonian Talmud, Anonymous (multiple authors) tier 1

Religious Experience, Doctrines

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Contested or Appropriated Modern Use

Currently States Steven Katz's constructivist argument, that a tradition's concepts shape the mystical experience itself rather than being applied only afterward, is debated against a perennialist view of a shared experiential core differently interpreted across traditions.

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

Religious Experience, Doctrines

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Status Within the Tradition

Currently States Genuinely disputed within this tradition

The Encyclopedia of Religion (Macmillan Reference, 2005) records Steven Katz's constructivist argument, developed through comparative analysis of mystical testimony across traditions, that a tradition's concepts shape the mystical experience itself rather than being applied only afterward in describing it. This is debated against a perennialist view, associated with Walter Stace, of a shared experiential core differently interpreted across traditions after the fact.

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

Religious Zionism, Doctrines

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Standing as a Comparative Category

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

Aviezer Ravitzky's Messianism, Zionism, and Jewish Religious Radicalism (University of Chicago Press, 1996) traces both a messianic reading of Zionism and a non-messianic religious reading to the same body of rabbinic and Zionist texts, and shows through close textual and historical analysis that the messianic reading became dominant only after Israel's 1967 territorial gains, not from the movement's religious Zionist origins. The atlas records the disagreement without endorsing either reading or applying it to any present question.

Source Messianism, Zionism, and Jewish Religious Radicalism, Aviezer Ravitzky tier 1

Remote Viewing, Psi Phenomena

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Key Experiment

Currently States The 1972-1995 SAIC/Star Gate program, roughly 20 million dollars in U.S. government funding across 22 years, tested remote viewing for intelligence applications.

The American Institutes for Research's 1995 evaluation, An Evaluation of Remote Viewing: Research and Applications, examined the government-funded remote viewing programme originating in Harold Puthoff and Russell Targ's Stanford Research Institute protocol of the 1970s. Both evaluators on the review, Jessica Utts and Ray Hyman of the University of Oregon, agreed the programme's output had no confirmed operational intelligence value and recommended termination, which the sponsoring agencies carried out in 1995. Where they disagreed, having examined the identical laboratory statistics underlying the operational programme, was whether those statistics showed a genuine anomalous effect worth further scientific study, Utts holding they did and Hyman holding methodological weaknesses in the underlying experiments were sufficient to explain them. The method for both conclusions was statistical and documentary review of the same body of records rather than a new experiment. Because the operational and scientific questions came apart, a shared recommendation to end the programme alongside an unresolved disagreement about the underlying science, the key experiment is recorded as debated on the scientific question even though the programme itself is closed.

Source An Evaluation of Remote Viewing: Research and Applications, American Institutes for Research tier 2

Remote Viewing, Psi Phenomena

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Replication Status

Currently States Jessica Utts and Raymond Hyman reviewed the same Star Gate data in 1995 and reached opposite conclusions, Utts finding the statistics persuasive of an anomalous effect and Hyman finding them inconclusive; the program was closed regardless as operationally useless.

Harold Puthoff and Russell Targ developed the remote viewing protocol at the Stanford Research Institute from 1972 and published it openly in 1976. The American Institutes for Research's 1995 An Evaluation of Remote Viewing: Research and Applications paired Jessica Utts, who concluded a statistical anomaly was real and worth further study, with Raymond Hyman of the University of Oregon, who concluded the same anomalies had not been shown to be psychic in origin and could plausibly result from methodological weaknesses in the underlying experiments. The method on both sides was statistical review of the same published experimental record rather than a new experiment, and both reviewers had access to identical data. Because two qualified specialist reviewers examined the same evidence side by side and reached opposite conclusions in reports both published without reconciliation, the AIR review stands as a rare, fully documented case of expert disagreement over one shared body of evidence rather than a result either side's own reading has settled.

Source An Evaluation of Remote Viewing: Research and Applications, American Institutes for Research tier 2

Ren (Benevolence), Virtues

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period

Currently States The Five Constants as a formally fixed set of five, correlated with the five phases, wu xing, is credited to the Han dynasty scholar Dong Zhongshu; the individual virtues are independently attested earlier in the Analects and Mencius.

Source Sources of Chinese Tradition, Volume 1, Wm. Theodore de Bary and Irene Bloom (eds) tier 2

Repatriation to Africa, Doctrines

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Point in Dispute

Currently States Whether repatriation is first a mental act, the throwing off of the Babylon account of who one is, with physical return as its completion, or whether the literal return is the demand and the spiritual reading a retreat from it. The argument is live within the movement and cuts across its houses.

Source Rastafari: Roots and Ideology, Barry Chevannes tier 1

Repentance, Doctrines

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Status Within the Tradition

Currently States Genuinely disputed within this tradition

The Encyclopedia of Religion (Macmillan Reference, 2005) compares how Catholic and Orthodox practice channel repentance through confession to a priest and absolution, while the Reformation churches retained confession in reduced forms while denying a priest is necessary for forgiveness. Islam's tawba has no equivalent institution at all, unmediated between the person and God, and Judaism's teshuvah is likewise unmediated with respect to God but adds, in the rabbinic formulation, that an offence against another person is not forgiven by God until the injured party has been reconciled, a structural difference the encyclopedia records as cutting against reading repentance as simply a transaction with the divine.

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

Res (Ra) ረ, Alphabet Letters

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Meaning in the Attesting Source

Currently States Why the script was vocalised in the fourth century CE, after centuries of writing consonants alone, is argued and not settled

According To The Ge'ez script

The World's Writing Systems (Peter T. Daniels and William Bright, eds., Oxford University Press, 1996) reviews the Aksumite inscriptions that first show Ge'ez written with vocalisation, a fourth-century CE innovation that is not in dispute, and canvasses three explanations for why it happened then: an internal development inside the Aksumite royal chancery seeking a more precise script for administration; a response to the newly Christian court's need for scripture translated and taught with unambiguous vowels after Aksum's conversion under King Ezana; and influence carried by vocalised Indian scripts reaching the Aksumite court through Red Sea trade contact. Comparing the timing, the epigraphic evidence and the trade record for each explanation, the volume's contributors find none conclusive, since Aksum's fourth-century contacts touched all three at once; the dating of the change is settled, its cause is not.

Source The World's Writing Systems, Peter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.) tier 1

Resh ר, Alphabet Letters

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period

Currently States Scholem places Sefer Yetzirah between the second and sixth century CE

According To Sefer Yetzirah: the thirty-two paths and the twenty-two letters

Gershom Scholem's Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (Schocken Books, New York, 1961) surveys the manuscript recensions of Sefer Yetzirah and finds no single stable text: the surviving copies diverge enough in wording and in the letter-to-planet and letter-to-sign correspondences that quoting "the text" requires naming which recension is meant. Comparing the linguistic style, the doctrinal content and the external references made to the work across centuries of citation, Scholem argues the book could have been composed anywhere from the second to the ninth century CE, a span of roughly a millennium, with later Kabbalistic and Hasidic writers each reading it through their own era's overlay. The atlas follows Scholem's range rather than a narrower guess, and does not print the per-letter planet and sign tables at all, because doing so would silently pick one contested recension over the others.

Source Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, Gershom Scholem tier 1

Resh ר, Alphabet Letters

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period

Currently States Survives in three recensions that do not agree in detail

According To Sefer Yetzirah: the thirty-two paths and the twenty-two letters

Gershom Scholem's Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (Schocken Books, New York, 1961) surveys the manuscript recensions of Sefer Yetzirah and finds no single stable text: the surviving copies diverge enough in wording and in the letter-to-planet and letter-to-sign correspondences that quoting "the text" requires naming which recension is meant. Comparing the linguistic style, the doctrinal content and the external references made to the work across centuries of citation, Scholem argues the book could have been composed anywhere from the second to the ninth century CE, a span of roughly a millennium, with later Kabbalistic and Hasidic writers each reading it through their own era's overlay. The atlas follows Scholem's range rather than a narrower guess, and does not print the per-letter planet and sign tables at all, because doing so would silently pick one contested recension over the others.

Source Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, Gershom Scholem tier 1

Rhea, Deities

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin of the Name

Currently States Rhea's name has no secure Greek etymology and is widely considered Pre-Greek in origin, like several other early Titan names.

Rhea's name, like several early Greek Titan names, has no secure Greek etymology and is often considered Pre-Greek in origin. Proposed connections to Greek roots for flowing or ease have not won general acceptance, and specialists treat the name as unexplained.

Source Greek Religion, Walter Burkert tier 1

Rhode Island, States & Territories

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin of the Name

Currently States Commonly traced either to the Dutch explorer Adriaen Block's description of a reddish island, roodt eylandt, or to a resemblance early explorers saw to the Greek island of Rhodes; no single account is settled.

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference), Encyclopaedia Britannica editors tier 2

Rhonda Byrne, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit Start Year

Currently States 1951

Sources give her birth year as either 1945 or 1951, a discrepancy that runs across her own public biography as an Australian television writer and producer; the more widely repeated figure, 1951, the one her own most consulted reference gives, is recorded here, but no birth record has been found to settle the disagreement between the two years.

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica: Verified Biographies (online academic reference), Encyclopaedia Britannica editors tier 2

Richard Hodgson, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Notable Publication

Currently States The 1885 report to the Society for Psychical Research concluding that the Mahatma letters were written by Helena Blavatsky and confederates

Richard Hodgson and the Committee of the Society for Psychical Research published their Report of the Committee Appointed to Investigate Phenomena Connected with the Theosophical Society in the Society's Proceedings in 1885, concluding after handwriting analysis of Theosophical Society correspondence that Helena Blavatsky had forged the letters she claimed came from Mahatma spirit-masters. Vernon Harrison's 1986 re-examination, published by the same Society, applied more current forensic handwriting standards to the same original letters and argued Hodgson's 1885 handwriting analysis was methodologically unsound. The Society published Harrison's critique without formally withdrawing the original 1885 report, leaving both documents in its own published record as competing findings.

Source Report of the Committee Appointed to Investigate Phenomena Connected with the Theosophical Society, Richard Hodgson and the Committee of the Society for Psychical Research tier 1

Richard Hodgson, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Principal Critic

Currently States Vernon Harrison, a specialist in questioned documents, whose 1986 paper argued Hodgson had reasoned from a conclusion reached early and had misapplied handwriting comparison

Vernon Harrison's J'Accuse: An Examination of the Hodgson Report of 1885 (Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 1986) re-examined the original handwriting samples behind Hodgson's 1885 conclusion that Blavatsky forged the Mahatma letters, applying forensic document examination standards Harrison argued were more rigorous than those available to Hodgson in 1885. Harrison's method was direct comparative handwriting analysis of the original letters, and neither his critique nor Hodgson's original report is regarded by the Society that published both as having settled the matter, since each relies on the examiner's own expert judgment applied to the same ambiguous handwriting evidence.

Source J'Accuse: An Examination of the Hodgson Report of 1885, Vernon Harrison tier 2

Richard Hodgson, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Key Experiment

Currently States The eighteen-year investigation of Leonora Piper in Boston, using private detectives and anonymous sitters, which found no fraud and which converted Hodgson to belief in survival

The Society for Psychical Research's Psi Encyclopedia entry on Leonora Piper documents Richard Hodgson's own extended investigation of her mediumship, in which he concluded, after ruling out fraud and normal information-gathering to his own satisfaction, that her results indicated genuine communication with the deceased. Hodgson's conclusion is not the consensus reading among later researchers; sceptical accounts, developed through the same comparative study of cold-reading technique used to explain other mediums' results, attribute Piper's apparent successes to skilled cold reading and to information unintentionally supplied by sitters themselves during sittings, rather than to the paranormal explanation Hodgson's own investigation favoured.

Source Leonora Piper (Psi Encyclopedia), Psi Encyclopedia (Society for Psychical Research) tier 2

Richard Hodgson, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit Start Year

Currently States 1855

Biographical accounts of Hodgson consistently place his birth in 1855, in Melbourne, Australia, though no single primary record fixes the year with the same certainty as his sudden death while playing handball in Boston in 1905.

Source Our History, Society for Psychical Research tier 2

Richard Wiseman, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Notable Publication

Currently States The 1999 meta-analysis with Julie Milton finding no overall effect across thirty ganzfeld studies conducted after the autoganzfeld series

Julie Milton and Richard Wiseman's Does Psi Exist? Lack of Replication of an Anomalous Process of Information Transfer (Psychological Bulletin, 1999) statistically pooled thirty ganzfeld telepathy studies conducted after Bem and Honorton's original 1994 meta-analysis and found no overall effect across them. A later pooling by Storm, Tressoldi and Di Risio, covering studies from 1992 to 2008 using a different set of inclusion criteria, reported a positive effect across that period; the two research teams disagree specifically about which individual studies should be included in a meta-analytic pool at all, a methodological dispute that accounts for much of why their conclusions differ from the same broad body of underlying research.

Source Does Psi Exist? Lack of Replication of an Anomalous Process of Information Transfer, Julie Milton and Richard Wiseman tier 1