Human beings--unique civilized animals--die and kill to prove the reality of a sacred idea or ideal or entity. The nature of the idea or ideal or entity for which human beings die and kill is fungible.

What is the source or purpose of this profoundly masochistic, self-destructive way of being? To pretend there are "omnipotent objects" separate from concrete reality--capable of rescuing us from our inevitable demise.

Among entities or ideas or ideologies for which human beings have died and killed

This, of course, is a "short list." Experienced historians could do better. This template structures the civilizational process, enabling Professors to write four-hundred page "history books."

Of course, each episode is unique in its own way, but what occurs happens according to an invariant template, which is why I use the term "law." The template or mechanism enacted as "history" is the same, regardless of the nature of the idea or entity for which it is enacted: death--and memorials erected in the name of those who have died—testify to the reality of the idea or entity for which dying and killing occurs. Subsequently, a "memorialization" process is undertaken, serving as a more or less permanent record of sacrificial death performed in the name of a sacred object.

What an extraordinary, one might even say metaphysical process--what it means to be a human animal different from every other animal. And then evolutionary psychologists come along, developing complex, convoluted theories serving to pretend that somehow dying--the inability to pass one's genes along--has "survival value."