 For instance, the emotions may be religiously important even if they are not bound up with an experience of God or a sacred space, because of their role in signalling that certain matters are properly the object of attention. Evolutionary accounts of emotional experience commonly emphasise the significance of the emotions in constituting patterns of salience. For instance, it is obviously of adaptive value if a large, fast-approaching dog is afforded a certain salience in my perceptual field, while the colour of the linoleum floor on which I am standing is consigned to the periphery of my awareness. And in standard cases, to feel fear of a dog is, in part, to view the relevant scene with such salience. (Compare Oatley and Jenkins, 1996.) Here, emotional responses help to frame rational thought, by determining what it is appropriate to attend to and in turn to reason about. And, arguably, similar connections hold in religious contexts.