we can seriously entertain the experience-source hypothesis—that is, the hypothesis that basic religious convictions around the world are cultural reworkings of a recurring set of direct experiences and not (only) reworkings of indirect historical contexts or psychosocial constructions. In David Hufford’s terms, this is the idea that, “some significant portion of traditional supernatural belief is associated with accurate observations interpreted rationally. This does not suggest that all such belief has this association. Nor is this association taken as proof that the beliefs are true.”
