Scientists and philosophers gather to discuss battle and religion.
By Daniel Hartill
Staff Writer

PORTLAND – Thinkers from around the world gathered in Portland Wednesday to discuss war, religion and whether one can exist without the other.

These thinkers didn’t agree.

One said war and religion have evolved together in human society and always will. Another compared it to global warming, asking for more data before joining in.

Others held out hope that religious zealotry, like that which led to the Sept. 11 attacks, may some day be harnessed for peaceful purposes. It might also be spite.

“Call me a pessimist,” said Allen MacNeill, an author and professor at Cornell University. “I don’t think you can separate them.”

Officials at the University of New England, which sponsored the two-day meeting, said they weren’t looking for answers, only new questions.

The meeting was the second for the school in the last two years.

In 2002, the southern Maine school sponsored a conference on unconscious thought, pulling together experts from several sciences.

This time, the conference looked at religion from the perspectives of philosophy and the sciences of evolution and how the brain works.

The scheduled topic of Wednesday’s discussion, “Religion, Terrorism and War,” was meant to be provocative. About 50 people, including professors from around the United States and Europe, attended the talk, held at Portland’s Eastland Park Hotel.

MacNeill, who describes himself as an “evolutionary biologist,” said he believes religion and the desire for spiritual meanings are built into the brain, like the programs on a new computer. But it’s not alone. The desire for making war is there, too.

And as one develops, so does the other, he said.

When western people stopped merely raiding their neighbors and began creating armies, as the Romans did, they also created a “pantheon of human-like deities.” When they evolved further into urban civilizations, they became monotheistic, he said, developing religions which believed in a single God.

MacNeill also said he drew few distinctions between war and terrorism.

But Pascal Boyer, a former Cambridge professor, said something else drives terrorists, particularly those who sacrifice themselves as they fight. He called it “spite behavior.”

Like someone who files a costly lawsuit to punish someone for a $20 mistake, terrorists are often led by uncontrollable frustration, said Boyer, currently the Henry Luce professor of Independent and Collective Memory at Washington University in St. Louis.

Often the frustration is religious, Boyer said. Sometimes, it’s a more general rage.

“Of course we’re concerned that terrorists are trying to blow us up, but most of these people are spending their energy on hurting their people at home,” Boyer said.

dhartill@sunjournal.com