Oh, man…  I had this all written out, and then the discussion was closed!  I couldn’t let it disappear, since I can never write the same thing twice.  So, this will be my notepad.

“I think that it is ridiculous to assume a moral code if you do not believe that you will be held accountable to it.”

So, “not out of fear of divine reprisal” is not the point you started off with. However, I may be reading you wrong.  So, I will rebut with this; You say that you would do all those horrible things if you didn’t believe in god.  I do none of those things, yet don’t believe in a god.

“Love the lord your god” – “love your neighbor as yourself”

You freely do the first, yet you admit you would bail on the second in a heartbeat, if it weren’t for the first, even though they are given nearly equal weight in scripture.  There is thus no reason to see this as morally codifiable unless the code is actually irrespective of any divine weight (whether love or punishment) behind it, in which case the existence of an author of that code is non sequitur.

“Ironically, the reality atheists can’t coincide with humanism is that in the absence of a higher power, human individuals mean nothing. You’re not important, your life has no significance, and a generation from now it will be as if you never existed.”

And this is simply mere assertion, and demonstrably false, since I believe there is no god (or at least there is no reason to believe in one), yet untold generations have passed from the time of Sumer, their notables nestled snugly in the history books, and plenty of significance is afforded them.

I do agree, however, with “man possesses self-love above all things.”  I am wholly on board with “perfect altruism does not exist.”  It’s one of the reasons I believe that the sketchy historical record of Jesus doesn’t bear out the claims of his perfection – to choose, one must make his or her ego ultimately disregard the Other, irrespective of the benefit it provides them.  To die on the cross was a choice, and thus not an example of perfect love, since anyone could have chosen the same (were it not for the supernatural component of mortal culpability, an entirely different can of worms), and scripture leaves no room for the actions of a mortal being potentially equal to that of the divine.

And here, I have to quote another savior:

Choice.  The problem is choice.