Research on Buddhist Cosmology from the Perspective of Religious Comparison
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsI liked the contrast between Buddhism and Marxist atheism. I think you are right about the differences, but I think the difference could be highlighted and explained better. From a Western perspective, traditional theism involves not only supernatural entities like angels and ghosts but also the source of being (a creator God). To call a religion "theistic" that denies a creator God(s) is unusual on a Western account but not impossible. You might be able connect Marxist atheism to atheistic materialism, which is the denial of anything supernatural or paranormal. Buddhism is clearly different from atheistic materialism even though it may still be atheistic when it comes to denying a creator God.
The Western concept of God described in lines 253-254 is good, but the one starting in lines 255-257 is problematic. In classical theism, at least, God does create ex nihilo. Also, God is usually conceived as an entity not a capacity, contrary to your claim. These unusual claims need to be explained or supported, at the least. In addition, in lines 257 and 258, you discuss God directing things to their ends, but this is not explained. Is this Aristotle's idea? The Western idea of God needs more careful elaboration.
Comments on the Quality of English Language
The text of the essay contains repeated lines, punctuation errors, and sentence construction errors, including fragments. It needs to be edited by an English specialist and page editor.
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Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsPlease kindly consider the term "Atheism" in your title, which might be too strong for me. Buddhism (or the Buddha himself) recognizes the existence of various gods and goddesses (or deities), though it denies the Creator God. We even saw Christian God and Islamic Allah worshipped along with Buddhist figures in Buddhist temples throughout Southeast Asia. The living Buddhism does not deny the Creator God.
In conclusion, at the very least, the author would need to address the phenomenal happenings noted above.
Comments on the Quality of English LanguageI am not qualified to judge the language style of the submitted manuscript./
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Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsVen Yin Shun (印順) was of the modern Chinese Buddhist monk, who strongly proposed a theory of atheism in Humanistic Buddhist. The author may consider to including it in to the discussion.
For P.3 106 about Ven Yin Shun and communism, Yin Shun had been revised to this, during 1954, may re-look to this.
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Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsI could be wrong, but it seems that the authors are not simply giving a comparative analysis but also trying to make the case that that Buddhism is not atheistic in the Marxist sense. From my point of view, this claim is not particularly novel. The authors claim that Buddhism accepts the supernatural (lines 342-364) just not the kind of supernatural that Christianity proposes. This too is not a new idea, in my opinion. For this reason, I don't think this article contributes much to new scholarship. One way to improve here would be to say more about these "multiple supernatural gods" (line 364). Who are they? Does the Chinese Buddhist tradition have different gods than the Theravada tradition? This would be interesting.
The best section of this paper is section 2, which compares Mount Sumeru to the Christian story of creation. This section is almost worth the price of admission. Perhaps the future of this paper lies in dividing the sections and making them separate papers. This is just an idea.
Also, what about Dharmakaya? I'm no expert on this concept, but it seems that the authors should mention this concept of ultimate reality, comparing it to the Christian concept of God. At least, it is deserving of a footnote. In Christianity, God isn't simply creator of the physical universe; he is ultimate reality. It seems that any comparison between the two religions would need to compare the two different ideas of ultimate reality.
If Marxist philosophy is not a main theme of this article, as the author say in their reply, I would remove anything but a brief mention to it. For example, why include paragraphs 365 and 370? I would either commit to say more about atheism on the Marxist account or remove these paragraphs from the essay.
Comments on the Quality of English Language
The essay contains multiple sentence construction errors (example: lines 4-7) and word choice errors.
Author Response
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