Open Questions

Open Saint

Why It Is Open The Consulta Medica is asked whether a recovery is explicable by the medicine of the day, and the medicine of the day changes. No public record shows whether findings have been revisited as diagnostic categories moved, and the acts of individual causes are not generally published in full.

What Would Settle It Access to the medical dossiers of closed causes, or a published retrospective by the Congregation itself, examined by clinicians against current diagnostic criteria.

Expertise Needed History of medicine; canon law

Question posed in Making Saints: How the Catholic Church Determines Who Becomes a Saint, Who Doesn't, and Why, Kenneth L. Woodward, Chapters on the medical consultors.

Open Saint

Why It Is Open The comparative literature has not settled this. Using one tradition's word for the others carries with it a juridical, posthumous and universal notion of holiness that the wali, the tzadik, the sant and the arhat do not each share, and specialists in those fields regularly object to the translation. There is no agreed replacement term.

What Would Settle It A sustained comparative study working from each tradition's own vocabulary outward rather than from the English word inward, and testing whether any set of features is genuinely shared across them.

Expertise Needed Comparative religion; religious studies

Question posed in The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions, John Bowker (ed.), s.v. Saint.

Open The Army, Line 5

Why It Is Open King Wen 7 lines 3 and 5 contain the same two character phrase in the received Chinese text, the one usually rendered as carrying corpses in the wagon. The atlas keeps the image at line 3, whose description reads that the army may carry corpses in its wagons, and drops it at line 5, whose description reads only that disorder follows even a just cause. One phrase is therefore represented twice in two incompatible registers, and nothing on either page tells a reader that the underlying text is the same. Whether this was a deliberate reading or an accident of two passes is not recorded.

What Would Settle It Checking the received text of King Wen 7 lines 3 and 5 against a critical edition, then deciding one way for both lines: either the concrete image is kept in both, or the reason for treating the two occurrences differently is stated on the page. Any correction touches a line description and is owner gated.

Expertise Needed Sinology, specifically the textual history of the Zhou Yi.

Question posed in Divinity Atlas Open Questions Register, First Edition.

Open Sarmoung Brotherhood

Why It Is Open The whole account descends from Gurdjieff's own writing and from what he told pupils. The Armenian manuscript he names has not been produced or identified, no location has been established, and no independent traveller, official or scholarly record of such a body has been found for a region that was heavily travelled and reported on. Positions divide between a traceable synthesis of available currents, a real but unnamed Sufi lineage, and a deliberate literary device, and no evidence has been produced for any of the three.

What Would Settle It Identification of the Armenian source named in the account, or of any manuscript using the name; archival work in Russian, Ottoman and British records of Central Asian travel for the relevant years; and comparative study of the movements against documented Sufi and Central Asian practice by scholars with access to both.

Expertise Needed History of Central Asian Sufism; Armenian manuscript studies; the academic study of Western esotericism

Question posed in Divinity Atlas Open Questions Register, First Edition.

Open The Persinger God Helmet Experiments

Why It Is Open The founding series reported the effect and a double-blind replication at Uppsala in 2005 did not, finding that measured suggestibility predicted the reported experience while exposure to the field did not. Persinger held that the Swedish exposure protocol differed materially from his own. Neither side withdrew, no further trial has been run under a protocol both would accept, and the God helmet continues to be cited in popular accounts of the neuroscience of religion as though the matter were settled in one direction or the other.

What Would Settle It A pre-registered, multi-site, double-blind trial using the field parameters and exposure durations of the original series, with suggestibility measured and entered as a covariate rather than offered as a rival explanation after the fact, and with the analysis plan fixed before data collection.

Expertise Needed Experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience, working with the psychology of religion

Question posed in Sensed Presence and Mystical Experiences Are Predicted by Suggestibility, Not by the Application of Transcranial Weak Complex Magnetic Fields, Pehr Granqvist, Mats Fredrikson, Patrik Unge, Andrea Hagenfeldt, Sven Valind, Dan Larhammar and Marcus Larsson.

Open Reformed Egyptian

Why It Is Open Reformed Egyptian is described only inside the Book of Mormon's own text, attributed to Nephite scribes modifying Egyptian characters over centuries. No inscription, manuscript or artifact outside that text has been identified as an example of it, and mainstream Egyptology and historical linguistics have found no independent evidence such a script existed, so there is nothing external against which to locate an origin.

What Would Settle It An inscription or manuscript independently datable and decipherable, found outside the Book of Mormon tradition, that could be shown on linguistic or archaeological grounds to be the same writing system, would give scholars an actual artifact to locate and analyze.

Expertise Needed Egyptology and historical linguistics

Question posed in The Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith (translator, by his own account), Mormon 9:32-34.

Open Ekpe

Why It Is Open Ekpe was already a mature, fully graded institution by the time the earliest outside observers described it, so their accounts date contact rather than founding, and Cross River oral tradition does not preserve a single founder or a securely countable founding year.

What Would Settle It Comparative Ejagham and Efik oral-tradition fieldwork or an archaeological or documentary find independently datable to a period before the earliest colonial-era accounts, tying an early stage of Ekpe's grade structure to a place and an approximate century.

Expertise Needed West African historical anthropology and oral tradition studies

Question posed in Voice of the Leopard: African Secret Societies and Cuba, Ivor L. Miller.

Open Ogboni

Why It Is Open Ogboni is described in the scholarship as having developed alongside Oyo's own political institutions rather than being founded by a named person at a datable moment, and no Yoruba historical or oral source names a founder.

What Would Settle It Oyo court-history research or archaeology tying Ogboni's earth-veneration role and its check on royal power to an identifiable stage of Oyo's own political consolidation.

Expertise Needed Yoruba political history and religious anthropology

Question posed in The Yoruba Ogboni Cult in Oyo, Peter Morton-Williams.

Open Sarmoung Brotherhood

Why It Is Open The Sarmoung Brotherhood is known only through Gurdjieff's own narrative in Meetings with Remarkable Men and the accounts of those who took the story from him. No traveller, ethnographer or historian outside that circle has independently located or documented such a body.

What Would Settle It An independent nineteenth or early twentieth century record, travel account or local Central Asian source naming a body matching Gurdjieff's description, unconnected to Gurdjieff's own circle.

Expertise Needed Central Asian history and the history of esoteric movements

Question posed in The Harmonious Circle: The Lives and Work of G. I. Gurdjieff, P. D. Ouspensky, and Their Followers, James Webb.

Open Basque Mythology

Why It Is Open Basque mythology survives only as legend recorded from rural informants after Christianization was already dominant, and Basque, a language isolate, offers no comparative linguistic route to an earlier stage the way related Indo-European mythologies do. Nothing currently ties the figure of Mari or the wider nature-spirit cast to any datable period before the ethnographic record itself.

What Would Settle It An inscription, cult site or artifact in the western Pyrenees securely tied to a named pre-Christian Basque deity or practice, or a linguistic reconstruction anchoring core mythological vocabulary to a datable stage of the Basque language, would give scholars an actual point to reason from instead of the modern record alone.

Expertise Needed archaeology and historical linguistics

Question posed in Selected Writings of Jose Miguel de Barandiaran: Basque Prehistory and Ethnography, Jose Miguel de Barandiaran, ed. Jesus Altuna, trans. Frederick H. Fornoff, Linda White and Carys Evans-Corrales.

Open Ladin Mythology

Why It Is Open The Ladin legend cycle of the Dolomite valleys was gathered into literary form only in the early twentieth century, and no formal pantheon, priesthood or earlier textual trace survives to say how old the material already was when it was collected.

What Would Settle It An earlier manuscript, inscription or outside traveler's account referencing specific Ladin mountain-spirit legends before their twentieth century literary collection would establish a real floor for the material's age.

Expertise Needed folklore studies and historical linguistics

Question posed in Dolomitensagen (Wolff), Karl Felix Wolff.

Open Sardinian Folk Tradition

Why It Is Open Sardinian folk belief is described as layered over the island's prehistoric Nuragic civilization and Ozieri culture tombs, but the folklore itself was recorded only from the nineteenth century onward, and nothing currently establishes a documented line of transmission between the prehistoric archaeological culture and the modern oral material.

What Would Settle It Archaeological or textual evidence linking specific Nuragic-era ritual practice to a named figure or custom still recorded in nineteenth or twentieth century Sardinian folklore would establish an actual continuity, rather than a merely geographic layering.

Expertise Needed archaeology and folklore studies

Question posed in Leggende e Racconti Popolari della Sardegna (Turchi), Dolores Turchi.

Open Sicilian Folk Religion

Why It Is Open Everything known about the donne di fuori comes from sixteenth and seventeenth century Inquisition trial transcripts, an adversarial record built from interrogation rather than celebration, and no source independent of that prosecution says how established the belief already was when the trials began.

What Would Settle It A Sicilian civil, notarial or ecclesiastical record predating the sixteenth century that references night-gathering spirit-women under any name would show the belief already existed before the surviving trial record begins.

Expertise Needed history and folklore studies

Question posed in The Ladies from Outside (Henningsen), Gustav Henningsen, in Bengt Ankarloo and Gustav Henningsen (eds.).

Open Tengrism

Why It Is Open Test why open, twenty plus characters here easily.

What Would Settle It Test what would resolve, twenty plus characters here easily.

Expertise Needed Sociology of religion

Question posed in Tengrism (Wikipedia).

Open Sefer ha-Bahir (The Book of Illumination)

Why It Is Open Kabbalah has historically limited study of foundational texts such as the Bahir to students judged ready for it, and this widely published translation's own pages do not say whether that limitation reaches this edition or a citation drawn from it.

What Would Settle It Someone familiar with how this translation is actually used in practice today confirming whether it is treated as open study material or as a text still reserved for prepared students.

Question posed in Sefer ha-Bahir (The Book of Illumination), Anonymous.

Open The Secret of the Golden Flower: A Chinese Book of Life

Why It Is Open This is a Taoist text of internal alchemy with meditation instruction, and some lineages that teach material of this kind pass it only from a teacher to a prepared student; this edition's own pages do not say which applies here.

What Would Settle It Someone familiar with this translation and its source lineage confirming whether the meditation instruction it contains is still treated as limited to guided students or is offered here as published material.

Question posed in The Secret of the Golden Flower: A Chinese Book of Life, Trans. Richard Wilhelm; commentary by Carl Jung; English trans. Cary F. Baynes.

Open The Rohingya Genocide

Why It Is Open Access to Rakhine State was tightly restricted during and after the 2017 clearance operations, and the UN Fact-Finding Mission's own report states it could not establish a verified total; independent estimates published since range widely with no consensus figure.

What Would Settle It Independent forensic and demographic investigation inside Rakhine State, which Myanmar's government has not permitted at the scale required.

Expertise Needed Forensic demography and human rights investigation

Question posed in Report of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar (A/HRC/39/64), United Nations Human Rights Council.

Open State Atheism in Albania

Why It Is Open Clergy and believers were imprisoned and executed under Communist Albania's religious ban, but no independent body has separated a cumulative death toll for the ban specifically from Enver Hoxha's wider political repression.

What Would Settle It Archival research in Albania's post-Communist state security records isolating religiously motivated cases from the regime's broader political imprisonments and executions.

Expertise Needed Archival history

Question posed in Irreligion in Albania (Wikipedia), Wikipedia contributors.

Open The 1999 Ban and Crackdown on Falun Gong

Why It Is Open Detention, forced labor camp sentences and reports of torture and deaths in custody are well documented since the 1999 ban, but advocacy organizations and the Chinese government publish estimates that diverge by orders of magnitude, and neither is independently verified nor cross-checked against detention records outside state control.

What Would Settle It Independent access to Chinese detention, labor camp and mortality records, or a systematic international investigation with verified access to prison and camp registries from the relevant decades.

Expertise Needed Human rights documentation

Question posed in Falun Gong and the Future of China, David Ownby.

Open The Persecution of Ahmadis in Pakistan

Why It Is Open Individual killings and mob attacks against Pakistan's Ahmadi community are documented incident by incident since the 1974 constitutional amendment and the 1984 Ordinance XX, but no independent body has compiled a cumulative total across the full decades-long campaign of legal restriction and violence.

What Would Settle It A systematic count from an independent human rights body, cross-checked against Ahmadiyya community records and Pakistani state records, covering the full period since 1974.

Expertise Needed Human rights documentation

Question posed in Ordinance XX of 1984 (Pakistan), Government of Pakistan.