Can atheists and Christians work together?

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They can. Both people turn secularist and leave religion at the door.

Christians have been left with sufficient guidance on how to treat other people ('neighbours'). Atheists are free to decide what to believe in, therefore if the problem in poorly conducted communication were on their side, one would have no particular set of values to appeal to in resolving the problem.

Christians have moral tutelage in how to treat others, while atheists are entirely selfish in their outlook.

NYAH NYAH NYAH!

I can play that game, too. Feel better?

I disagree. Atheists don't need guidance on how to treat other and for that matter, neither do religious people. Everyone has a conscience and personal ethical values, whether religious or not and I don't think they're dependent on whether they believe in gods or not.

Actually, being kind to others only because of the threat of hell or some other such negative afterlife seems to be more selfish to me than being kind because you can or should. As an atheist, I resent that statement, which promotes a false belief that being nonreligious means that a person does not follow the same guidelines as religion encourages. It just means I do so without expecting some reward, now or after I die, an I think that is true altruism.

I really don´t see why religious and non-religious people can´t work together. All it takes is a little tolerance from both sides and keeping your personal beliefs to yourself when working together. But then it´s easy for me to say in a secular country with a tradition of religious tolerance going back to the 16th century. If there´s mistrust between groups, it´s going to be a lot harder.

Most Christians (I do not know about other religions, though I believe mainstream Hinduism, if such a thing indeed exists, is the total opposite) do not believe in salvation through works, but through accepting God's grace. That is, belief in God is more important for getting into heaven than being a good person. Good works of such people are thus not motivated by self interest. However, it could be argued that this position is less philosophically sound than the afterlife being determined by acts.

You could also be deceiving yourself while expecting praise or even immediate material benefits, or just creating an image of yourself as a moral person that makes you more comfortable with who you are, all without acknowledging this dubious motivation.

Secular people are no less vulnerable to criticism of 'phoniness' than religious people. Even moreso I would say, because how much believers are supposedly afraid of 'hell' is just your wild guess, while Christians have a very good idea what it's like to desire earthly benefits and what spiritual self-deceit is, as they're trying (or are supposed) to combat that stuff.

@Walrus: The Biblical view is that faith without deeds is meaningless. I do believe there is the dichotomy between protestantism and Catholicism as to whether it is faith or the deeds that lead to salvation, probably the two denominations you come in contact with the most.

Christians and atheists work together all of the time in business, and in most other corners of society already.

Christians probably get along with athiests better than they do with jews, muslims, mormons, and even with other christian sects.

They can, so long as all the "You're stupid, irrational, and inferior/you're going to burn in hell for all eternity" is kept out of it.

That is a flawed argument since the only reason to believe altruism is good is because God said so.

Objective morality requires right and wrong answers to moral questions to exist, which begs the question "what is the source of those answers?" Since any source of absolute moral authority could be called a God, one cannot be an atheist and believe in objective morality.

Since morality requires right and wrong answers and subjectivity cannot provide answers that are right and wrong in absolute, subjective morality is an oxymoron.

So an atheist must by default be a moral nihilist, and if you do not believe good and evil exist you cannot argue that your altruism is good.

My apologies if that came across as judgmental and antagonistic, as I wasn't trying to insult you, just present things as I see them. Feel free to argue, as I'm actually interested in your response. I had an ongoing debate with MCalavera on this topic for a while but it got multi-quoted into oblivion and I never seem to have the time to bump it.