 As with the question of its phenomenology more generally, so there is controversy surrounding the contribution of emotional feelings, in particular, to the character of religious experience. William Alston has asked: if the phenomenological content of a religious experience were to be purely affective, would that be a reason for doubting that it is directed at anything? In that case, he notes, we might well suspect that the experience consists in a felt response to a believed presence (1991, pp. 49–50), rather than in some presentation of God to the believer.