From PhilPapers forum Philosophy of Religion:

2010-04-23
A theory of religion
Reply to Derek Allan
Hi Derek, My responses are in brackets.

I think you are setting impossible conditions for criticism. You seem to be saying that if I don't address every single sentence in your article I have no right to discuss any of it. That principle would quickly put an end to all philosophical discussion everywhere!

[Nope, nothing impossible about it. Obviously you don’t have to address every sentence in my article. You do have to satisfy the account I gave of an SR in the passage I quoted.
That’s what it IS to give a counter-example to my account!]

The fact is you state: "This reality consists either of (a) sentient supernatural beings (e.g. gods) or of (b) an insentient metaphysical principle underlying the universe (e.g. The Unconditioned, Sunyata, or The Tao)."

My criticism related to the second condition. Now, you also add "This principle has features that mark it as belonging to a different order of reality from the objects that make up the mundane world: it cannot be named or cognized, it can be described only in contradictions, it doesn't arise or pass away, it issues in everything else, it is utterly changeless, or..."

Frankly, this hardly helps you. On what basis, for example, can you assert that the reality in question "can be described only in contradictions". Is this true of all religions, now and in the past? Is it even true of Christianity? Does St Paul describe Christ "only in contradictions"? Does St Augustine? Do Christian theologians all do this? The other conditions you list here are also doubtful, I would think. So maybe you are safer not to insist that I take these additional bits into account.    

[If it doesn’t help me at all, it should be all the easier for you find a counter-example that satisfies it!
 It is most certainly part of my account that the metaphysical principle  has features
that mark it as belonging to a different order of reality from
the objects that make up the mundane world: it cannot be named or
cognized, it can be described only in contradictions, it doesn't
arise or pass away, it issues in everything else, it is utterly
changeless, or... These are given as EXAMPLE S of the sort of things that mark a principle
as belonging to another order of reality. They don’t ALL have to be satisfied, and maybe others
I don’t mention suffice–but to satisfy my account the metaphysical principle must have SOME
features that mark it as belonging to a different order of reality from the objects that make up
the mundane world. A counter-example must satisfy this feature, along with the others.

OF COURSE it isn’t true of Christianity. There the Supermundane Reality is not an underlying metaphysical principle but a sentient supernatural being!]

   Re your comment on Wordsworth, you can't be serious. See if you can find anywhere in Wordsworth criticism the suggestion that Tintern Abbey resembles the Upanishads! As for "underdescribed", I quoted you three lines of a fairly long poem. Do you know it? It is one of the most famous in the English language - usually understood as a kind of paean of praise for a notion of Man (not God) associated with Romanticism - the kind of idea that animated much of the 19th century and which is expressed with enormous power in this particular poem. If you aren't aware of this kind of thing, and you are writing about religion, I suggest, with respect, that you read a little more widely outside philosophy. One can hardly talk about religion without some sort of affinity for, and familiarity with, good poetry. Large numbers of the world's key religious texts were, after all, written as poetry or in poetic language. (Perhaps if these sages had all lived in the 21st century they might have captured their revelations in the dry, clinical style of analytic philosophy - but I am inclined to doubt it...)

[The problem with the Wordsworth quotation as a counter-example is that it is vague, incomplete and underdescribed. It isn't clear what he is talking about and it is hardly obvious that it's
about something 'secular.'  The response that these three lines of verse are part of a larger poem and I really ought to go read it is hand waving.
You say it’s easy to find a counter-example? Then you have the burden of producing one HERE, in clear language, your own or someone else’s but clear enough to evaluate. That’s what it IS, Derek, to give a counter-example.

Let me make it easier for you. if you are going to give a counter-example you will need to describe a metaphysical
principle that A) underlies the universe, B) is marked in some way as belonging to another level of reality than the mundane, and C) It comprises a level of reality deeper than what sense
perception (even assisted by scientific instruments) reveals, and
its nature is best discovered by other means, e.g. meditation (D) it can figure centrally in satisfying the
sort of substantial human needs that people generally want
religions to meet (e.g. long life, immortality, the end of
suffering). Finally it will have to be plausible that the principle that satisfies A, B, C and D is secular. And you will have to do it here, in words that give us a good idea of what you are describing. That’s entirely fair. Nothing impossible about it, unless I’ve got it right. Good luck  with it. ]