{"id":457,"date":"2010-10-07T08:30:30","date_gmt":"2010-10-06T22:30:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/?p=457"},"modified":"2010-11-04T09:30:20","modified_gmt":"2010-11-03T23:30:20","slug":"humanity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/?p=457","title":{"rendered":"Humanity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Question from Evelyn:<\/strong><br \/>\nFrom what I have read you have a major interest in our humanity and how we can be be significant in an otherwise insignificant world. Why is this important for an Atheist to feel this way?<br \/>\n<br \/>\n<strong>Answer by <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/smartlx\">SmartLX<\/a>:<\/strong><br \/>\nI think it&#8217;s important to a <em>human being<\/em> to feel this way.  That&#8217;s why I get tons of arguments along the lines of, &#8220;If there&#8217;s no god then nothing we do matters.&#8221;  God is the reason many religious people use to feel significant where we otherwise wouldn&#8217;t be, and losing that can be a frightening prospect.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nWhat I&#8217;ve written on the subject is generally ways to claim significance without referring to an absolute authority, which is necessary to fill that gap.  It&#8217;s easy, really, because we humans are tremendously significant <em>to each other<\/em>.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nUltimately I think we are insignificant in the grand scheme of the universe because besides us and any aliens who might come along, there&#8217;s no one out there to be significant <em>to<\/em>.  And because of this, it shouldn&#8217;t matter to us in the slightest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;God is the reason most religious people use to feel significant where we otherwise wouldn&#8217;t be, and losing that can be a frightening prospect.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[174,159,160,175],"class_list":["post-457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-text","tag-atheist-existentialism","tag-humanity","tag-significance","tag-universe-next-door"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/sB6tr-humanity","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=457"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":508,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457\/revisions\/508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}