University of Maine philosophy professor Douglas Allen will explore how and why faith has been a source of hate and violence in a lecture, “Religion and Violence Today.” The program will be held at 12:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 21, in the Bangor Room of the Memorial Union at UM in Orono. “No religion preaches ‘thou shalt kill,'” Allen said in a phone interview earlier this week. “All have teachings of peace and love. Religion, in practice, is very contradictory.” Allen also will present a universal model of religion in his lecture and emphasize the spiritual and ethical teachings of Gandhi. “I want to issue a kind of challenge from Gandhi to show how a radically different perception of religion could teach something to all religions and give us some hope.” For information, visit www.umit.maine.edu/~douglas.allen/.