Emilie Durkheim shows how the use of religious symbols help give meaning and solidifying religious teachings and help in maintain social order by belief in these common symbols. For example, the star of David. The star of David represents the connection between inner dimension, external dimension and the soul explained in the teaching of Kaballah, but the Star also represents the values of the faith such as kindness, severity, harmony, and perseverance. “sacred things are simply collective ideals that have fixed themselves on material objects." (1973, p. 159 [excerpt from "The Dualism of Human Nature and its Social Conditions"]). When a child is born rituals takes places a synagogue which initiates them into Jewish way of life, this is called “Berit Habayyim” and everyone gives blessings to the child, as well as a doctor comes and does circumcisions, which solidifies/symbolizes the covenant to the faith and responsibility to follows values (page 24 Inside Judaism). Religions use of symbols help remind individuals of the teachings of the faith and how they must live and thus maintains the Social order created by religion. Emilie Durkheim advocates religion and shows the positives; creation of social order, guidelines for the individual etc. Karl Marx is the opposite; he believes that…show more content… Religion helps answer the questions that man cannot answer such as death and feeling anxieties. Religion doesn’t act as an opiate but as that of a light in a dark tunnel. It doesn’t solve one’s problem but it aids in the individual’s ability to solve the problem or gain clarity. This is a feeling that religion creates and can evidence can only be expressed by individuals who have studied religion both in the emic and etic. An example of this is in the Torah, there are passages that explain about how one must handle anxiety, giving one strength rather then suffering in self
