"I think irrationality plays an important role in thinking about our own existence and it rationalizing everything down to its core isn't necessarily helpful."

It's not irrational to posit that you are more than merely a 'bag of particles'.

Just because scientific materialism, taken to it's extreme, might want to describe us as such, does not mean it is true.

Scientific materialism is only one metaphysical perspective, based on assumptions - such as the universe is ordered and can be described with a set of rules. There is no full evidence of this, it's just an assumption. Given that some of the material universe seems to 'mostly' adhere to a set of equations, and because it's objective ... we like scientific materialism a lot, but we also have to remember it's not the only way to look at things.

Consciousness itself, or rather, life, the perspective of 'the observer' could be the reality that matters. The expression of life itself is the interesting thing that only seems 'miraculous' from the perspective of materialism because it's literally denied by it -> that materialism can't seem to describe life is not so much a realization of science, rather it's an assumption that we started with: the universe is just a pile of particles, ergo, we are a pile of particles. The later does not follow the former as a logical conclusion, rather, the assumption that 'everything is just particles' basically implies the later.

It may very well be more rational to accept that life / consciousness is 'real' - and it seems to transcend our materialist conclusions because materialism as a metaphysical perspective just doesn't fully work, i.e. there's a hole in it.

Consider that we ultimately developed logic / reasoning / scientific materialism mostly to enable our lives and expression i.e. it's just a Tool, not a Truth.