When I was an atheist, I thought I was being brave. I thought I was being strong to refuse all the "stories" we tell ourselves, just so we don't have to face the dark and scary reality of the world...
What I realize now is that the abyss of the unknown was what was making me believe science can explain everything already. That there are competent, intelligent and wise people who have a very precise understanding of the world and the universe, and that was consolation. I wanted there to be no uncertainties and unknowns.
While it felt stable, it also took away the fact that we don't know so many essential things about ourselves, the universe, existence. Me believing what I used to believe took away that strange wonder, which I'm pretty sure many early scientists felt when they went against the consensus of their time.
A lot of our worldview and perspectives at first, are to deal with the unknown, the fact we may disappear and go extinct with a simple asteroid being redirected towards earth by the Oort cloud, or a sudden aneurysm ends our everything. This is no trivial thing to deal with, for any one of us.
We still don't know more than we do, but we're getting better eyes lately. Maybe we will hone our minds in a similar way too.