"I'm sorry Julian, you seem to be working hard to establish a middle ground that nobody wants to occupy." I'm finding it hard to disagree with this comment by DiscoveredJoys on last week's post about what reasonable religious belief could look like today. But since the main purpose of posting my articles of 21st-century faith was to find out just how many could support them, the project is not worthless if we find out the answer is hardly anyone at all.

To recap, there's a lot of complaint that "new atheist" criticisms of the supernatural aspects of religion miss the point. If that's true, then it should be possible both to set the atheists straight and establish the credibility of religion by clearly stating what faith without silly, primitive beliefs looks like. This I call "reasonable faith", and although several commentators here have protested that I'm arrogantly laying down the law on what is or is not reasonable in these matters, all I can say is that I can only call it as it I see it, and I do not think that anything counts as reasonable just as long as some people believe it is.

The articles aim to set out what is required for reasonable faith in the most general, minimal terms possible. Then, by seeing how many people can agree with them, we can ascertain whether or not there is real and widespread support for a form of religion that avoids the new atheism's harshest charges. Preliminary feedback is not encouraging. Before posting the articles I approached a few commentators for their opinions.

Top of the list was Karen Armstrong, since she has been the most prominent advocate of seeing religion as mythos not logos: roughly speaking, as about values and practices, not beliefs about what exists or has happened on earth or beyond. So not surprisingly she agreed with the first article, which asserts that creeds or factual assertions are at most secondary and often irrelevant to religion. She also agreed, with some reservations about the wording, with the second, that religious belief does not, and should not, require the belief that any supernatural events have occurred here on Earth, and the third, that religions are not crypto- or proto-sciences.

Although she said that she was with me on "religious texts are the creation of the human intellect and imagination", she said "your wording is prohibitive", because it "would antagonise a lot of people. It is too bald and needs nuance. There needs to be some acknowledgement that the 'supernatural being' is only a symbol of transcendence – something that many religious people understand intuitively – even though they might not express it explicitly. That religious language is essentially symbolic – pointing beyond itself to what lies beyond speech and concepts". I have to say I can't see why my wording makes any of this problematic. Still, with caveats, Armstrong is basically with me.

Also on board is agnostic ex-priest Mark Vernon, again with some reservations about wording. The prominent atheist blogger and philosopher Massimo Pigliucci said: "I would not object to religions based on those four tenets, though I do wonder what the point of a religion would be if people actually agreed to them, particularly the second and fourth ones."

Finally, John Gray found it all very reasonable, but wouldn't actually "sign up" to the articles for various reasons, one being that too many complexities can't "be captured in a short list of propositions" and another being that "I tend to be sceptical of anything that's credal, even when it's as reasonable as this". Qualified support, then, but only from a confirmed atheist who is unusually supportive of religion, an agnostic ex-priest, an ecumenical former nun who has rejected all dogma, and another atheist.

It's like discovering that central state socialism has its defenders, it's just that none are actual central state socialists. In this case, the worry is that people who do not at all represent real, existing religion are defending it by appealing to characteristics it doesn't actually have. If the articles of faith are to provide any hope of establishing the existence of the kind of reasonable faith I think should be possible, we need to get support for them from people who are actually actively and self-consciously religious.

So far, that has not been forthcoming. Theo Hobson, for example, a self-described "liberal" theologian, says: "I'm afraid I don't really sympathise with this. Christianity can't be reformed by the neat excision of the 'irrational'/supernatural. It is rooted in worship of Jesus as divine – the 'creed' side is an expression of this."

Nick Spencer, research director at the eminently reasonable public theology thinktank Theos, was even clearer in his rejection, saying, for instance: "Although religious texts are indeed created by human intellect and imagination, that doesn't mean they can't be taken as expressing the thoughts of the divine … I don't see what's left of the Abrahamics if you do take this out of the equation in this way". Spencer also provides little hope of finding too many other supporters out there, adding that "there would be precious few Christians I know … who could sign up to all your points. To take just the most obvious example: according to mainstream Christian thought, Christianity is founded on a belief in the physical resurrection."

Giles Fraser, even though he is a radical cleric who recently resigned as canon chancellor of St Paul's Cathedral, says this is "tricky" and "I'm not sure I can assent to any of these. Which is not to say that I agree with their opposite either. These are just not the terms in which I do God." Even some atheists, it seems, can't agree with me that assenting to the four articles would make religious belief reasonable.

AC Grayling says the articles "leave out the crucial bits about religious belief, which are that there is powerful supernatural agency or agencies active in or upon the universe, with … responsibility for its existence, an interest in human beings and their behaviour, a set of desires respecting this latter, etc". For Grayling, it's not worth asking the hypothetical question of whether religion in the form I described would be reasonable because he doesn't think religion could be understood in those ways.

One source of resistance is that the articles are expressed as beliefs when for many, the whole point is that we need to move away from putting beliefs at the centre. Hence Gray would prefer the second article to talk of "religious practice" not "religious belief", while Hobson says "believing in God" is "rather unhelpful" and that it's "better to talk of 'doing God'," which is just the phrase Fraser used when expressing his reservations.

But I'm afraid I find this all too evasive. As I argued last week, it is not forcing a false choice on anyone to ask if they agree with a statement or not unless you compel them to choose between two options, which do not exhaust the possibilities. It's also true that you cannot reject certain propositions without, by simple logic, committing yourself to what they negate. And as I pointed out the week before that, the claim that religion is not about belief is itself a belief, which reflects the fact that there are plenty of beliefs about religions to agree or disagree with, even if you think the religion is more about doing than believing.

Hence the rejection of the articles suggests that either most liberal religious commentators and leaders are inconsistent or incoherent; or that they ultimately do believe that when it comes to religion, creeds and factual assertions matter; belief that supernatural events have occurred here on Earth is required; religion can make quasi-scientific claims; and that human intellect and imagination are not enough to explain the existence of religious texts. If that is indeed the case then DiscoveredJoys is right that when it comes to belief: the middle ground is virtual deserted.

We'll see if this is confirmed over coming weeks as I get more responses to the articles, and analyse the results of my surveys of Christian churchgoers. However, even if this middle path does vanish, that does leave one intriguing possibility open. Could it be that the common ground I'm looking for is not one centred on belief at all, but something else, such as a commitment to certain values around enquiry and coexistence? I think it might and it's a possibility I hope to come back to in due course.