What people are willing to die for is not much of an indicator of its validity. People make huge personal sacrifices, up to and including their lives, for all sorts of sublime AND ridiculous things, all the time. They die for their country in battle. They die for authoritarian nutjobs like David Koresh or Jim Jones or ideologies like radical Islam. They shun close family members who are apostates or deviants from their particular accepted norms -- effectively killing them off so far as they are concerned. The argument that there must be something to a belief that so entrances people that they are willing to die for it, does not hold water. Unless a Christian is willing to say that a suicide bomber validates Islam by their logic, I don't buy the notion that the early church must have offered something real because people were willing martyrs to it.

As for my name for what keeps people taking a licking and yet keep on ticking ... it is rationalization. All you have to do is figure out some way to convince yourself that the effort you input into your existence is worth the outputs you get from it. Or at least, it is if you write off your past suffering as sunk cost.

It's my view that life isn't a rational proposition, but it doesn't really have to be. I write off my past suffering as sunk cost, I know I'm doing it, and that the overall sum total of efforts / intentions vs outcomes doesn't add up. But I've decided that it doesn't HAVE to. I have people I love and that love me, interesting things to do, promises to keep, and I can enjoy today. It's really that simple. No hocus pocus needed.

One word: passion.