To your points:

1. There are no gods, so god did not create anything.

2. There are some animals that have self-awareness. Humans do not maintain
   any kind of exclusivity in that respect

3. Humans aren't any more or less "special" than any other species. Many of us
   just think we are.

    "Dignity" is a wholly subjective concept. Whether it needs "justification" or not, is entirely up to the individual.

There are various reasons why humans, along with all of nature, are worthy of dignity and respect. The fact that anything at all exists is unbelievably marvelous. A single living cell is as complex as a city.

To not accord respect to all aspects of nature is to be living in a fog. To take it all for granted and greet life and reality with anger and scorn is illogical and irrational.

We DON’T KNOW how all of this arose, or what it means. The only logical response that I can think of is that of the utmost respect, awe, gratitude and appreciation in the face of the overwhelming miracle of existence.

Point One is essentially a ridiculous proposition. Its more like we created God in our image.

Point Two is equally ridiculous, the proposition smacks of complete ethnocentrism. We are just another biological species on this planet. We evolved a tool that is called abstract thought. It gives us the ability to modify our immediate environment, but it also shields us from those instinctual urges that actually protects us from being unfit (evolutionarily speaking) for our environment. this fact alone will lead us to our demise of the human species as we move further and further from our evolutionary fitness.

Each species of organism on our planet has evolved specializations that allow them to survive and proliferate in their adapted environment. Eagles have wings, talons, a beak adapted for tearing its prey, and exceeding acute eye sight. The mangrove is adapted to briny environment that is so brackish as to be untenable for other plant semi-terrestrial/semi-aquatic plant life. Etc.

Its just one more adaptation,nothing more nothing less. When humans arose from their quadrapetal ancestors, it became necessary to find an adaptive strategy that would allowed them to survive. After all, their prey was significantly larger than them (aka. Mastodon, mammoth, Athabascan bison, etc,). It took communications, community organization, and tools manufacturing to ring them down. Also the animals that preyed upon them were equally as large and daunting (cave bear, Smilodon, etc). Natural selection gave us a larger and abstract thinking brain, but its just one more tool in the lexicon of evolution of organisms on this planet.

Point three describes the rationalizations that humans use to elevate themselves above other species on the planet. It is fallaceous as a single virus can render the entire species extinct given the right adaptation and the right circumstances (which we are approaching given population, transportation,and sanitation).

Now on to dignity. I think all organism express dignity as long as they are maintaining their evolutionary fitness for their environment. When their adaptive strategies fail, they either adapt to new circumstances or go extinct. The dignity is their evolutionary success.

Human Dignity is the unspoken innate right to be valued and respected. It has the quality of self-respect that is worthy of esteem. Dignity manifests as a comprehensiveness and the fullness of a person. It demands an unspoken innate right to be respected with ethical treatment. If human life is sacred then the human person is the underpinning of an ethical image for all of society. Humans are inherited with free and equal rights..." They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

I justify human dignity for the reason that I do not want to inhabit a world where human dignity is not justified. Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights,” and though I’m not a religious person, human rights is a topic where my views perhaps approach religiosity. I’m ok with that, as I believe that, if there is any teleology of ethics, the direction is towards recognition of dignity in all living things.

No, and it doesn't need to be justified. We just exist. We are not all that special, and our time is likely to be, in earth-time terms, brief and unremarkable.

Firstly Sir, in your paragraph (1) you mis-stated that " God made man AND WOMAN in his own image."
According to the texts of the Goat-Herders Guide to the Galaxy, aka the bible, God CREATED only man, i.e. Adam, from the dust of the ground and LATER, from a rib taken from Adam he created woman, i.e. Eve, ergo God did NOT create both human genders in his own image, otherwise, and logically speaking, this God of the Abrahamic religions MUST have, to all intents and purposes, been Hermaphroditic in both nature and appearance to create 2 separate and entirely different, externally, genders in HIS own image.
Secondly, dignity is something that is DUE to ALL things living, including humans, and needs NO justification nor defining.

Justification is sometimes something that bible believers want to get into. Fundies almost make it into a biblical doctrine. I get lost with ideas of how we need to be justified on something.

Dignity has been defined as "the right to be valued and respected" and I would assume "human dignity" is an attempt to say every human is somehow entitled to said value and respect.

I would say that humans demonstrate that they have earned value and respect, both individually, and collectively. Or not. I regard it as a mistake to try to divine some inherent, automatic, inviolable dignity.

One could argue that, like all forms of respect, it might be best to afford some default level of value and respect until proven wrong, because it's usually wrong to assume that any given person is completely, irredeemably despicable. And one should be careful to judge someone as an exemplar of failed humanity. All that said, not everyone has covered themselves in glory, and some people deserve ignominy, censure, and ostracism -- a select few deserve to be hounded by it all their days.

I recognize that there's a danger here -- that there's a tendency to demonize and dehumanize people who don't deserve to be, because of some differentness or weakness. For example, I would not weep for Donald Trump if he were tarred and feathered, but at the same time, out of respect for the rule of law if not for Donald, he should be subject to the same evidence-based day in court as anyone else. And respect for the rule of law is respect for humanity as a collective, and then we're back to saying that this might rub off on even the worst of asshats a little bit.

It is a matter of Pragmatism. Do unto others as you wish to be done unto you. Although Christians claim that concept, it appears in some form or another in all other religions but is also a non-religious pragmatic approach to the question.

What is important is that humans are continuously shown to be able to cope in any situation. Is that the same as being dignified or justified? . It is not that they should be raised above any other human being - just that they should not be coerced or made to submit in any way because humans can solve problems together.

I'll take a second shot at this. Since I'm going to be cremated at death a theist working at a funeral home told me he preferred a death with dignity. I quickly informed him that death has no dignity.

Why does anything need to be justified . Just live your life and help as many people as you can

I don’t agree that our species merits any thoughts about “dignity,” given our behavior over the past 2 millennia since the rise of monotheism. It’s not “dignified” to kill and torture our own kind over trivialities. The early Byzantines, for example, killed each other over the burning question of whether the deity was one entity or 3. Since then, we have engaged in other activities such as The Crusades, The Inquisition and The Holocaust. Now we are flying airplanes into buildings to kill people by the thousands. Christians and Muslims have been fighting each other for 1500 years, not over which has the true god, but which has the true prophet of the god. Human dignity...an oxymoron.

Because some people are selfish jerks who don't care about their fellow humans.

Ummm, because you feel as a white Male nobody else needs human dignity? How is this even a question????!

Yes, but simply because when we treat others with dignity and respect. most will act as though they deseerve it. And, if theydo act in such a manner, they do deserve it.

human dignity is not something that needs to be or can be justified.
some people have it others will never have it.

I would like to see this in a poll!

Maybe #3