A couple of things: First, all beliefs and most thoughts are "emotional". Very little, if anything, is based on empiricism and most things cannot be (most things aren't testable, repeatable, falsifiable, peer-reviewed, etc.) and things thought to be empirical, like belief in "logic and reason", is known as naive realism. There are huge bodies of work dedicated to this in neuroscience, behaviorism, and epistemology--so you can do away with the idea that some things are "true" on a dichotomy and realize that it's in fact a continuum that you are perceiving and not calculating or cataloging.

Just wanted to thank you for the nice post, and ask (referring to the spirit of the quoted paragraph) if you have studied phenomenology? I used to share views similar to the OP, but changed my mind after studying the phenomenology of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty and others for a few years.

In my view, some of the most significant advances of 20th century continental philosophy were the development of compelling arguments against naive realism, important critique and reforms of empiricism as well as what Merleau-Ponty calls intellectualism (the idea that, among other things, explicit acts of the intellect are fundamental to all experience). When these three issues are considered, sound intellection starts to seem not quite as important as it did before. Yes, examining testable, falsifiable claims and employing the tools of rationality is an important exercise, but it makes up such a small part of our actual lived experience. We live in a world where, 99% of the time, we are motivated by emotive and pragmatic concerns. And even when we do employ reason, it is often to simply justify positions we have already made our mind up about. Phenomenology did a really good job of pointing this out, and saying "Hey, why is philosophy focusing so much on these intellectual activities that we engage in so rarely? What about the other 99% of human experience? What is happening when we eat, go to the toilet, hug our spouse, stand, walk and all that other stuff?" Probably the most profound philosophical realization I've ever come to is that the world as lived (or the lifeworld, to use Husserl's term) is so much more important than it seems - that empiricism, rationality and the tools of persuasion are not the be-all-end-all of everything. Too bad many people in philosophy circles don't share that view...

Anyway, it was nice to see someone who seems to get that. Kudos. I agree with your position on the OP's view wholeheartedly.