Crime and Punishment Response

I for one really enjoyed Crime and Punishment, which was a surprise because I usually avoid translations in literary pursuits. However, C & P related to a big part of my big question. My question hinges on emotion and emotion's role in shaping perception. We talked quite a bit about Rodya being a rationalist and other characters such as Razumikhin who rely more on their beliefs.
I noticed the interplay between emotion and religion versus rationalism and realism throughout the book and throughout Raskonlnikov's character development. I would have liked to have discussed this more in class, but unfortunately the day this idea took shape our discussion had to end and we never picked it back up again. If I recall correctly, though, we briefly talked about how rationalism goes out the window when emotion comes into play--like when Rodya commits the murders and suddenly, despite all his efforts, he makes ridiculous mistakes. For my polarity chart, I did believer/unbeliever, and in thinking about that I found that most of the characters I charted as believers were those who went by emotion--like Sonya, Katerina, Raz, etc.--whereas the unbelievers were rationalists rooted in reality, or their present state in the world--like Raskolnikov and Svidigrailov. But I had a problem with Sonya. Many of the characters who fell back on their beliefs determined those beliefs through their emotions rather than reality, and therefore fell away from reality and went crazy, like Katerina. Sonya follows religion, though, and really never gets carried away.
So I was thinking, perhaps Dostoevsky is saying that religion is the most stable of beliefs--it's rationalized emotion. In relation to my big question, I think creative impulse is the rationalization of emotion, at least to a certain degree. Religion is creative. Writing is creative. Living, if done right, is creative. Emotions happen and make everything chaotic, as in Raskolnikov's case, and it is up to human perception to take those emotions, incorporate them into something that makes sense, and develop a belief.