The UK secular media reported victory for former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Rowan Williams in a debate with author and atheist Richard Dawkins on whether there is a place for religion in the 21st Century at Cambridge University late last week.

According to The Guardian, Dawkin’s lost the debate by 324 votes to 136 at the end from an audience of almost 800 mainly Cambridge students.

The Dawkins debate team also included head of the British Humanist Association, Andrew Copson and Cambridge philosophy lecturer Arif Ahmed. On the Williams side were Tariq Ramadan (Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies at Oxford) and Douglas Murray (director of British think tank the Henry Jackson Society and best-selling author).

Williams argued that while religion certainly has a place in this day and age, the challenge is what our attitude towards religion will be: “”critical, indeed. Receptive, I trust. Engaged, above all,” he said.

Arguing for a public rather than private religion, the former Archbishop defined religion as always being a matter of community building. “Building those relationships of compassion, fellow-feeling and inclusion which would otherwise by absent from our society.”

Williams went on to argue that the idea that human beings are worthy of respect and endowed with dignity is a fundamentally religious idea, a universal moral commitment that is “not so self-evident that we can ignore the question of where it comes from.”

Richard Dawkins and Rowan Williams at Cambridge University last week. Photograph: Jane Stockdale/Cambridge Union

However, Williams cautioned that religion in the 21st Century must remain public, rather than be driven to a purely private practice:  “Religion should be the object of the kind of scrutiny and critique that we’re talking about tonight. Religion that is allowed to bury itself in privacy, is religion that very frequently goes extremely sour. Religion left to itself, protected from public scrutiny and debate of this kind, is religion that is liable to caricature of the kind we’ve heard this evening.

Despite loud applause at his introduction, Richard Dawkins was “rather less measured” in his arguments, according to The Guardian writer Sam Jones, choosing to focus on whether religion was ‘true’, and labelling it a “cop out”, a “phony substitute for an explanation, which seems to answer the question until you examine it and realise it does no such thing”, and a “pernicious charlatan”.

But Dawkin’s arguments did not win over the audience. Douglas Murray, on the opposing side to Dawkins despite being an atheist himself, wrapped up the argument: “The deal in the 21st century must be this – religions must not have the ability to dictate the lives of those who do not follow those religion…religions will have to concede that. But the non-religious should make concessions too…accept that it is not the case that religion has nothing whatsoever to say. It does. It has a voice. It has a contribution to make. It is thoughtful, in parts. If the 21st Century is to work, it will involve all of these things. It will involve religion knowing its place, but it will also involve atheists and secularists to know that it is not their place to dismiss, deride and laugh at as meaningless, something which seeks for meaning.

“People can agree with Professor Dawkins and his colleagues, but no rational person could agree with this motion.”

Watch the full debate here.