All the atheistic/agnostic people I know believe they are insignificant in the grand scheme of nature, not just in the chain of generations of people.
If anything, I find religious people are the ones who believe humans are special.
If anything, I find religious people are the ones who believe humans are special.
As a religious person, I see my life as insignificant compared to Gd, and compared to the chain of generations, but what I do with my life is extremely significant. As in, whether I bring children into this world and raise them well, is massively significant.
So maybe the way to say it is - religious people see themselves as insignificant in the context of much greater significance.
The other view of insignificance is that nothing is significant - including myself. I don't subscribe to that.
What's significant though is the PREVALENT opinion. 100% of my religious friends want and have kids, while the majority of my secular friends do not. I work in FAANG and previously in finance, so my peers are people who can certainly afford kids and are positioned to take care of them - and yet literally most are choosing to do something else.
I am not commenting on a universal attitude, I am commenting on a significant trend that I think is obvious.
Do all of your religious friends subscribe to the same religion?
If so, does this religion proscribe having children and raising families as a necessary, or desired, component of the faith or community?
Because you could be confusing religion and culture here. Secular values often abrogate traditional gender and sexual norms, so secular people may not feel compelled to "be fruitful and multiply." I wouldn't ascribe that to lack of religion per se so much as not being affected by the same cultural pressures. After all, plenty of theists are essentially forced into marriage and children because it's what's expected, not because it's what they want.
Religious people see "be fruitful and multiply" as a literal command from G-d and one of the fundamental points of religion. So while religious culture can evolve, the evolution of this attitude isn't a flexible point.
On the flip side, secular culture has no intrinsic reason for "family values" - which is why, I think, atheist culture over time devolves to childlessness - because reasons "why not" are more immediate and in your face, vs "why yes."
So yes it's "culture" but what the culture is is obviously determined by your underlying beliefs and that which you consider eternal and that which you consider negotiable.
I don't think the data supports this, yet. Religiously affiliated completed TFR is 2.2 while unaffiliated is 1.8. However, completed TFR means this is looking at those older than 60, so expect those numbers to drop in the future.
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2025/02/26/religion-fer...
From my observations, TFR is not much different between most people who describe themselves as religious and most people who describe themselves as non religious. However, the TFR is different for those who I would describe as the most religious, compared to the "casually" religious/non religious.
For example:
https://danielgordis.substack.com/p/israel-has-high-birth-ra...
The people that show up to the casual one once a year or even a few times a year aren't really "different" than someone who doesn't bother to show up. It's good they are there but the religion isn't influencing how they think and act - which is why the TFR is similar between casually religious and casually non-religious.
Where things differentiate is on the extremes. Someone explicitly atheistic (vs just non-religious) has a TFR around 1 from what I remember, while orthodox and ultra-orthodox have 3.3 and 6.6 respectively. What makes the difference is the degree to which they allow the religion to permeate their mundane existence, which is a factor of faith.
So while it may be true that certain small deeply religious populations are more incentivized to have children, this doesn't seem like a significant effect at population levels overall. You'll also find small non-religious groups with similar behaviors.
For what it's worth, krapp's comment is better written but is what I'm talking about here.