Disputed Statements

Discordianism, Religions

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Point in Dispute

Currently States Whether Discordianism is best understood as a religion, a parody of religion, or a case where that distinction fails to apply.

Camp one, represented in the academic study of new religious movements by Carole Cusack's Invented Religions, treats Discordianism as the founding case of a genuine modern category, a deliberately invented religion whose self-aware playfulness does not prevent it from functioning as real religion for at least some adherents, in the same way later invented traditions such as Jediism have been shown to do. Camp two, closer to how much of the public and some early commentators received it, reads Discordianism as essentially satire, a joke dressed in religious form to mock the conventions of religion rather than to practise one. The Principia Discordia's own authors declined to resolve the question, presenting Discordianism as simultaneously a genuine joke and a genuine religion and treating the demand to pick one as itself a symptom of the ordered thinking the tradition exists to needle.

Source Invented Religions: Imagination, Fiction and Faith, Carole M. Cusack tier 1

Diti, Deities

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Meaning in the Attesting Source

Currently States A binding or a bond. The word is the positive that the name Aditi negates.

Diti's name is grammatically the direct negation of Aditi, the great Vedic mother goddess, and Vedic scholarship argues over which of the two names came first. Arthur Anthony Macdonell's Vedic Mythology (1897) records the two positions as: that Diti is an old figure in her own right whose name Aditi's own name then negates, or that Diti is a later back-formation invented to give the existing negation aditi something concrete to negate. The method is textual, an argument from absence: Macdonell notes that Diti has no hymn of her own in the Rigveda, no developed epithet and no narrative material, the main evidence offered for the second reading, since a genuinely old figure would ordinarily accumulate some independent material across a corpus as large as the Rigveda. Because the Rigveda supplies almost nothing to check either proposal against beyond that absence itself, the question remains argued rather than resolved.

Source Vedic Mythology, Arthur Anthony Macdonell tier 1

Divine Liturgy of St Basil, Rituals

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period Start Year

Currently States 370

Basil of Caesarea died in 379, and among the eucharistic liturgies attributed to early church fathers its own text says his carries the strongest scholarly case for a genuine connection. That case is comparative, not settled: liturgical scholars continue to debate how much of the surviving text represents Basil's own composition against later expansion and regional variation, so 370 marks his active episcopate rather than a fixed date of authorship.

Source The Byzantine Rite: A Short History, Robert F. Taft tier 1

Divine simplicity, Doctrines

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Status Within the Tradition

Currently States Standard teaching, not formally defined

According To Christianity

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's entry on divine simplicity, edited by Edward N. Zalta and Uri Nodelman for the Metaphysics Research Lab at Stanford University, 2024, documents that the doctrine, that God is identical with each of his own attributes rather than possessing them as a composite being does, is standard in scholastic theology and was affirmed dogmatically at the First Vatican Council in 1870. Its method is again analytic: setting out the doctrine's logical commitments and comparing them against the requirements of personal agency, since a being identical with its own knowing and willing appears, on that analysis, to be a property rather than an agent capable of knowing and willing particular things as they arise. That objection, developed within contemporary analytic philosophy of religion, is why a doctrine settled at the level of church dogma remains strongly disputed at the level of philosophical argument.

Source Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta and Uri Nodelman (eds.) tier 1

Divine simplicity, Doctrines

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Status Within the Tradition

Currently States Standard within the tradition, but disputed in the contemporary academic philosophy of religion

According To Christianity

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's entry on divine simplicity, edited by Edward N. Zalta and Uri Nodelman for the Metaphysics Research Lab at Stanford University, 2024, documents that the doctrine, that God is identical with each of his own attributes rather than possessing them as a composite being does, is standard in scholastic theology and was affirmed dogmatically at the First Vatican Council in 1870. Its method is again analytic: setting out the doctrine's logical commitments and comparing them against the requirements of personal agency, since a being identical with its own knowing and willing appears, on that analysis, to be a property rather than an agent capable of knowing and willing particular things as they arise. That objection, developed within contemporary analytic philosophy of religion, is why a doctrine settled at the level of church dogma remains strongly disputed at the level of philosophical argument.

Source Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta and Uri Nodelman (eds.) tier 1

Dmitri Mendeleev, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns How Its Legacy Is Contested

Currently States Two of the 1875 to 1876 Commission for the Investigation of Mediumistic Phenomena's own members, the chemist Alexander Butlerov and the zoologist Nikolai Vagner, remained convinced Spiritualist sympathizers and did not accept its skeptical conclusions, a split within Mendeleev's own commission that Michael D. Gordin documents in A Well-Ordered Thing: Dmitrii Mendeleev and the Shadow of the Periodic Table (Basic Books, 2004).

Source A Well-Ordered Thing: Dmitrii Mendeleev and the Shadow of the Periodic Table, Michael D. Gordin tier 1

Do Ut Des: I Give So That You May Give, Beliefs & Restrictions

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Point in Dispute

Currently States How fully the transactional model describes Roman religious feeling

Classicists debate how far the transactional reading, drawn heavily from formal vow inscriptions and legalistic prayer formulas, describes the full range of Roman religious feeling versus how much sincere personal devotion coexisted with the contractual form; the phrase itself is a modern scholarly shorthand rather than an ancient technical term.

Source Religions of Rome, Volume 1: A History, Mary Beard, John North and Simon Price tier 1

Do Ut Des: I Give So That You May Give, Beliefs & Restrictions

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Status Within the Tradition

Currently States Genuinely disputed within the tradition

Do ut des, I give so that you may give, names the reciprocal, contractual logic scholars use to describe Roman prayer and offering, most visible in the vow, votum, where a specific future offering was promised contingent on the god delivering a specific outcome first. Beard, North and Price's standard academic history of Roman religion documents the legalistic precision of surviving Roman prayer formulas, specifying exactly what was requested and exactly what would be given, which Romans treated as necessary to the exchange's validity. How fully this transactional model describes the actual religious feeling behind Roman practice, rather than only its outward legal form, is debated among historians of religion: some hold that the contractual language was the whole of the relationship as Romans experienced it, while others hold that formal, contractual language coexisted with sincere devotion the sources do not record as directly, since inscriptions and legal formulas are not designed to capture interior feeling. Because the surviving evidence is disproportionately formal and legal in character, the question of what lay behind the formula is argued from silence on the informal side and has not been settled.

Source Religions of Rome, Volume 1: A History, Mary Beard, John North and Simon Price tier 1

Dog, Animals & Totems

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Contested or Appropriated Modern Use

Currently States The words spirit animal and totem are used in popular Western practice for a personal animal ally. Native scholars and communities object to both usages, on the ground that they take the vocabulary and the authority of particular Indigenous traditions and apply them to a generic and commercial practice.

Suzanne Owen's The Appropriation of Native American Spirituality (Continuum, 2008) documents the objection Indigenous communities in North America raise, ongoing and in the present tense, against the commercial "spirit animal" genre. Owen's study examines how the practice borrows specific Indigenous terms and claimed lineages, presenting them as licensing a service sold to outside customers, and sets that use against the communities' own accounts of what those terms and practices mean within their traditions. What is disputed, on Owen's reading, is not that people generally feel a kinship with animals, a widely attested feeling that belongs to no one tradition, but the specific commercial borrowing of Indigenous vocabulary and claimed authority. The atlas records the animal, records that the modern commercial practice exists, and records that this documented objection is made, without adjudicating between the parties.

Source The Appropriation of Native American Spirituality, Suzanne Owen tier 1

Dog, Dream Symbols

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Meaning in the Attesting Source

Currently States In the manual ascribed to Ibn Sirin the dog is read variously: a faithful but lowly companion

According To Islamic oneiromancy (attributed to Ibn Sirin)

The reading given here is drawn from Muntakhab al-Kalam fi Tafsir al-Ahlam, the dream-interpretation manual that circulates under the name of the early Islamic scholar Muhammad Ibn Sirin, who died in 728 CE. Comparing the manuscript history against Ibn Sirin's own lifetime, the received compilation is instead ascribed to al-Dari, working around the fifteenth century, more than seven hundred years after Ibn Sirin's death, which is why his authorship is treated as a traditional attribution carried by the text's popularity rather than a historical fact the manuscript record supports. The specific dream-symbol reading is recorded as this manual's content, not as Ibn Sirin's own words.

Source Muntakhab al-Kalam fi Tafsir al-Ahlam (attributed to Ibn Sirin), Attributed to Muhammad Ibn Sirin (d. 728 CE); the received compilation is later, ascribed to al-Dari (15th c.) tier 3

Dog, Dream Symbols

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Meaning in the Attesting Source

Currently States In other contexts an enemy or a base and hostile man

According To Islamic oneiromancy (attributed to Ibn Sirin)

The reading given here is drawn from Muntakhab al-Kalam fi Tafsir al-Ahlam, the dream-interpretation manual that circulates under the name of the early Islamic scholar Muhammad Ibn Sirin, who died in 728 CE. Comparing the manuscript history against Ibn Sirin's own lifetime, the received compilation is instead ascribed to al-Dari, working around the fifteenth century, more than seven hundred years after Ibn Sirin's death, which is why his authorship is treated as a traditional attribution carried by the text's popularity rather than a historical fact the manuscript record supports. The specific dream-symbol reading is recorded as this manual's content, not as Ibn Sirin's own words.

Source Muntakhab al-Kalam fi Tafsir al-Ahlam (attributed to Ibn Sirin), Attributed to Muhammad Ibn Sirin (d. 728 CE); the received compilation is later, ascribed to al-Dari (15th c.) tier 3

Dolphin, Animals & Totems

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Contested or Appropriated Modern Use

Currently States The words spirit animal and totem are used in popular Western practice for a personal animal ally. Native scholars and communities object to both usages, on the ground that they take the vocabulary and the authority of particular Indigenous traditions and apply them to a generic and commercial practice.

Suzanne Owen's The Appropriation of Native American Spirituality (Continuum, 2008) documents the objection Indigenous communities in North America raise, ongoing and in the present tense, against the commercial "spirit animal" genre. Owen's study examines how the practice borrows specific Indigenous terms and claimed lineages, presenting them as licensing a service sold to outside customers, and sets that use against the communities' own accounts of what those terms and practices mean within their traditions. What is disputed, on Owen's reading, is not that people generally feel a kinship with animals, a widely attested feeling that belongs to no one tradition, but the specific commercial borrowing of Indigenous vocabulary and claimed authority. The atlas records the animal, records that the modern commercial practice exists, and records that this documented objection is made, without adjudicating between the parties.

Source The Appropriation of Native American Spirituality, Suzanne Owen tier 1

Dominic de Guzman, Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit Start Year

Currently States 1170

The source marks this year circa, its own approximate estimate rather than a fixed date.

Source The Catholic Encyclopedia, Charles George Herbermann et al. (eds.) tier 2

Dominican Republic, Countries

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Legal Status

Currently States A concordat signed with the Holy See in 1954 and still in force grants the Catholic Church public funding, tax exemption and a role in state education that no other body holds, while the constitution guarantees freedom of conscience and worship.

The Dominican Republic's 1954 concordat with the Holy See, signed under the Trujillo government and still in force, grants the Catholic Church public funding, tax exemption and a role in state education that no other religious body in the country holds, a relationship that predates and sits alongside the country's constitutional guarantee of freedom of conscience and worship to all residents. The State Department's report records both provisions as currently operative without indicating that the concordat has been renegotiated since 1954 despite the government that signed it having since fallen. The tension is between a general constitutional guarantee of equal religious freedom and a specific, older treaty-level arrangement privileging one church, a structure common to several Latin American and Southern European states with historical Catholic establishment, and it persists here because ending or renegotiating a concordat is a matter of international treaty relations with the Holy See rather than a domestic law any government can amend unilaterally.

Source International Religious Freedom Report, United States Department of State, Office of International Religious Freedom tier 1

Domovoi, Mythical Creatures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lineage

Currently States The domovoi is sometimes said to be the spirit of a deceased head of the household or an ancestor, though other accounts treat him as a nature spirit with no human origin at all, a point folklorists have long disagreed on.

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

Donatus Magnus, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Place of Origin

Currently States Roman North Africa. The identification with Donatus of Casae Nigrae in Numidia is not secure.

W. H. C. Frend's The Donatist Church: A Movement of Protest in Roman North Africa (Clarendon Press, 1952) works through the fourth century North African ecclesiastical record to establish Donatus's career, and finds that record itself conflates him with a separate Numidian bishop of the same name active in the same controversy. Frend's method is documentary and prosopographical, tracing which acts and writings belong to which Donatus across the conciliar and polemical sources, and because the ancient sources themselves are not always careful to distinguish the two men, some modern accounts merge Donatus of Carthage with the Numidian bishop while others, following Frend's closer reading, keep them apart.

Source The Donatist Church: A Movement of Protest in Roman North Africa, W. H. C. Frend tier 1

Donatus Magnus, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit End Year

Currently States 355

Sources place Donatus's birth around 270 CE in Theveste, and his death, in exile, around 355 CE; neither date is precise.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition, F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.) tier 1

Donatus Magnus, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit Start Year

Currently States 270

Sources place Donatus's birth around 270 CE in Theveste, and his death, in exile, around 355 CE; neither date is precise.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition, F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.) tier 1

Donmeh, New Religious Movements

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period End Year

Currently States 1950

After the 1921 to 1922 Greco-Turkish War the central community relocated from Salonica to Istanbul, and communal institutions broke down under growing assimilation; most accounts treat the community as having ceased to exist as an organised, identifiable group by the mid twentieth century, though a small non-assimilated remnant is estimated to persist informally today, so no single settled end year is recorded.

Source Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah, 1626 to 1676, Gershom Scholem tier 1

Donn, Deities

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Point in Dispute

Currently States Scholars disagree about how much of Donn is an authentic pre-Christian death god rather than a euhemerized ancestor figure. Medieval genealogical tradition frames him as one of the mortal sons of Mil who drowned while the Milesians were invading Ireland, yet the belief that the dead gather at his dwelling before departing for the Otherworld reads to many scholars as a genuinely older mythological role dressed in later pseudo-historical clothing.

Source A Dictionary of Celtic Mythology, James MacKillop tier 2