The atheist also charged that there was "a huge, gaping hole" in Comfort's argument. "Simply put, if all creations need a creator, then what created God?"

Comfort replied that God "exists out of time" in a manner beyond human comprehension, "just as we accept the idea that the universe is infinite because we aren't able to chart its boundaries."

'Transitional life-forms'

For his part, Cameron focused on "the issue keeping so many people from believing in God" - Darwinian evolution, which he called "a fairy tale for grownups" because of what is called the "missing link."

"Science has never found a genuine transitional form that is one kind of animal crossing over into another kind, either living or in the fossil record," he said. "And there are supposed to be billions of them."

"Sapient" replied that evolution is ongoing, and "we are all transitional life-forms."

When debate moderator Martin Bashir asked the atheists what would happen if they're wrong about God, "Kelly" had a quick answer: "I would rather go to hell than go to heaven and worship a megalomaniacal tyrant."

In his final comment, Sapient said that "religion is a force for good when you take out the murder, mass genocide committed by God as documented in the Bible, religious wars, burning witches at the stake and Ted Haggard," - reference to an evangelical leader accused of engaging in extra-marital homosexual trysts.

Cameron ended his part in the debate by stressing that "if someone insists there is no God when creation clearly demonstrates that there is a Creator, the problem is not an intellectual one, it is a moral one. It is not the problem that you can't find God, it's that you won't find God."

After the event, Comfort released a statement indicating that he believed "the debate went wonderfully" even though "we were taken aback by the aggressive nature" of some in the audience, which was evenly divided between believers and atheists.

"The believers were very polite and quiet, while the atheists were extremely vocal" and even "nasty," he said. "We felt like a couple of goldfish in a pool of hungry piranhas and were getting a sense of what the early Christians must have felt in a Roman colosseum."

While the atheist debaters have not released a statement on the debate, they have set up a discussion forum on their website entitled "The Official RRS Defeats Way of the Master."

As Cybercast News Service previously reported, the debate was the result of a challenge from Comfort, whose "Way of the Master" ministry was profiled in a "Nightline" segment in 2006.

After seeing a feature in March on the RRS and its "Blasphemy Challenge," the evangelist e-mailed the show's producers to go face-to-face with the group and its members' belief that the existence of God cannot be proven scientifically.

All original CNSNews.com material, copyright 1998-2007 Cybercast News Service.

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