Where so little love exists that strife prevails,
There they will need some third person to hate
In order to come together—there, first, they wade in one blood,
There at least as they hew the cross and hammer the nails
Their quarrelsome natures must fatally unite.
Hence the continuous sacrifice and the Pascha on a plate.
There is a mystery in a human being, and only religion can reveal this mystery to us. Up until now, especially in the nineteenth century, efforts were made to apprehend the essence of religion through science and philosophy, which led to the gradual impoverishment of religion on the one hand, and science and philosophy on the other. That was perfectly intuited by Martin Heidegger for whom religion was of great importance. He argued that in order to properly understand philosophy and science, one must first understand religion. René Girard followed in that vein, but using different means, different tricks and a completely different method.
Mimetic Crisis
Culture is a great mimetic mechanism where everyone imitates their neighbor, where they all counterfeit one another and change into mirror images of their fellow men. Having not the possibility of multiplying oneself ad infinitum in a row of mirrors, claims Girard, neither man nor culture could exist. People are not as diverse as it might seem at first glance; they are the same.
Mimetic behaviors, meaning when the same people pursue the same goals, contribute to the creation of a unified world, which, in turn, leads to social antagonism. This antagonism is the result of conflicting desires, but the conflict is not about the fact that (take the example of children playing in the sandbox) Billy and George both like Laura and will soon find themselves fighting over her. It is not the object of desire (Laura) that is at stake in their game, but the desire itself.
Doubling occurs as soon as the object has disappeared in the heat of the rivalry: the two rivals become more and more concerned with defeating the opponent for the sake of it, rather than obtaining the object, which eventually becomes irrelevant, as it only exists as an excuse for the escalation of the dispute.