If anything the atheist who does not believe in the afterlife and does not expcect reward for his valor, yet still sacrifices his life for another is making a far greater gesture of love than the theist who expects both to live on after death and to be rewarded in the afterlife for his sacrifice.
This is one of the inconsistencies of atheism which, I think, argues against it.
In earlier posts on this very thread, atheists were posturing against the existence of anything “supernatural” – that ideas, values, “the good” and anything immaterial, really do not exist, in fact. If that is true, then values are chimeras and atheists are stuck with a kind of eliminative materialism. For you to now argue that you have more “respect” for a “group” or individual who does something heroic, charitable or kind, “just 'cause” would seem to lack any kind of cogency coming from the eliminative materialist position you would seem to have shouldered. What difference does it make within a materialist world view whether this accretion of molecules exists rather than that accretion? It was already argued that values and ideas don’t exist and, therefore, have no ontological status to speak of. Why would a value such as loyalty or courage now become so important to you? Why would it have any significance at all, given atheism?
I mean such a view of the “supernatural” importance of values isn’t necessarily inconsistent with atheism but it doesn’t derive from it either. It wouldn’t be proper to say that under atheism, values take on a kind of pristine character devoid of all baggage because these values themselves are part of the “baggage” that atheism sheds as aspects of the “supernatural.”
Now, again, don’t mischaracterize what I am saying. I am not claiming atheists cannot be heroic, charitable or moral. What I am saying is that it isn’t their atheism that can possibly warrant any of those. All of those are incidental to atheism because there is no justification from atheism per se that would warrant any of them as deriving FROM atheism.
Likewise I have much more respect for a group who do heroic, charitable or simply kind things and then just get on with their lives
than I do for a group who do something heroic, charitable or kind and then bang on about it to wring every last ounce of gratitude and reward out of it. 
This does have the flavour of a “cheap shot,” given that the motives of an individual for doing an act have always been considered in Christianity to be one of the “dimensions” to determine the true moral quality of that act. So, for example, someone who does something in order to have their deed “paraded before men,” in Jesus’ words, “…have already had their reward.”
In Christian ethics and theology, the actual reward of virtuous acts is to attain the virtues which are the reason for doing the acts themselves. Virtue is the reward, in itself. In other words, a person does virtuous acts not for the sake of attaining some extrinsic reward in paradise. The reward is to become more virtuous, more courageous, more charitable, more Christ-like or God-like for its own sake. That is the idea of sanctity, which is quite a different matter from becoming sanctimonious, per your description of what the theist does and why.
This is where theism essentially differs from atheism. For the theist, those values of courage, heroism, charity, love, kindness, etc. are inbuilt into the very nature of Being Itself because God Is the ultimate and transcendent source of all including the integral nature of what it means to be a human being. For the atheist, there is no such ground from which to argue values, unless you want to make a case that subatomic particles and matter have “heroism” or “courage” as detectible, quantifiable cosmological forces integral within them. Is that what you want to argue?
Another argument from ignorance from PR. You made the assertion, that atheists are incapable of such acts of love, you back it up. I am not building any argument on the assertion that atheists can feel and be motivated by love.
Again, I don’t think the argument would be that “atheists are incapable of such acts of love,” but, rather, that atheism has nothing within it that would underwrite such acts. There are no reasons in atheism that would convince rational animals (aka human beings) to do such things. If atheists did them, it wouldn’t be on account of their atheism, but based upon some other “squirreling in” of supernatural values or notions – the same supernatural qualities the existence of which were denied by atheists throughout this thread.
Great, so when you
finally get around to providing concrete robust evidence that a mind can exist without a body, space or time, you will doubtless provide as much documentation yourself. I mean, you
are going to back up your assertion eventually, aren’t you, seeing as it was
your standard?
So how about you start with explaining why it would be heroic or laudible for someone, under atheism, to give their life for someone else? Under what reasoned set of propositions could a person argue themselves into a position where they would willingly die or give their life for another person? By what grounds would they make such a decision? Perhaps by sheer quantity? Two or three others would be worth saving, but not one? How can it be decided whether one life is worth giving up for one other if value alone is to be the determiner? I mean strictly using atheistic, eliminative materialist premises, since you insist no minds (nor ideas, values, moral concepts, virtues, etc.,) can exist without bodies and, therefore, values have no enduring ontological standing. Why would something that does not exist be considered the grounds for relinquishing something that does?
