Critics of religion sometimes go further than raising epistemological doubts about the specific beliefs associated with religious traditions to question the validity of religious experience itself.  It is suggested by some that experiences of the sacred are either mistaken interpretations of phenomena which can be accounted for in non-religious ways, or simply delusions.  These critiques are distinct from those that focus on the institutional structures of religious life and the sometimes obnoxious ideologies associated with them.  In this paper I respond in a general way to this critical perspective, seeking to validate the experience of the sacred without placing any normative constraints on the forms such hierophanies may take.  I explore this issue from the perspective of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological analysis of perception, arguing that there is nothing about manifestations of the sacred that should cause us to reject them in advance, denying the very possibility of having religious experiences.  Indeed, in an important sense they seem to be an indispensable aspect of human consciousness, what Merleau-Ponty calls "the fundamental keynote of the world which is already given with the least of our perceptions."

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