Carl Sagan summed it up for me (and I am paraphrasing here).

If there is no God, no omnipresent, omnipotent divine entity in the universe and each of us is nothing more than an aggregation of elements and compounds, our thoughts and dreams simply electrical impluses speeding through synapses and nerves that owe their existence to chance and chemistry, then consider this. We are made up of the elements that comprise the whole universe - these elements were created in the exploding hearts of supernovae, in the fiery cauldrons of gas and plasma where stars are born, in the depths of volcanos and driven from the nuclear core of a thousand million suns.

We are the stuff of the universe, made of it's raw materials and we are conscious of it. We can contemplate our own existence and stand on our small planet and question our very reason for being. We are the universe itself made conscious, the universe contemplating itself, and that makes each one of us so valuable, unique and so full of potential it is truly staggering to comprehend. All this, at the very least. If we are just biomechanical machines. No God(s).

To my mind, that is truly wondrous and inspirational.