Vehement Atheist, Professor Richard Dawkins, ventured into enemy territory to take on religious fundamentalism last night.

Speaking in Birmingham Alabama, an established notch in the Bible Belt, Dawkins took on Christian apologist John Lennox in a 90 minute debate based on the claims in the best seller The God Delusion.

Professor Dawkins, whose Out campaign urges closet Atheists to profess their unbelief and combat religious fundamentalism, acknowledged that not all religious people “are bad” or “dangerous”. But he warned that once “unstable” or “violent” people are granted a platform of faith, “terrible things follow”.

Dr Lennox, author of God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God, accused Dawkins of “airbrushing out” the atrocities committed by Atheist regimes but said he was “ashamed” as a Christian of travesties committed in the name of Christianity such as the Crusades.

Do not call me a fundamentalist

I believe that people will courageously cast aside their celestial comfort blankets, says Richard Dawkins

In an effort to silence his opponent, Professor Dawkins, who was he said “intensely frustrated” by the format of the evening, said Atheism did not motivate people to carry out terror. The men who “flew planes into various targets across America” on 9/11 were not “psychopaths” but “educated people who thought they were doing good” for their faith, he said.

The debate was sponsored by the Fixed Point Foundation, a Christian think-tank based in Birmingham Alabama.