Peterburgian Vedism "to know" ("vedat")—a semantic root which is shared in Slavic and Sanskrit languages alike—, and it expresses the difference between sight or knowledge and dogmatic belief ("verit"), the latter being typical of non-Vedic doctrines. According to one of the contemporary leaders of the Peterburgian Vedic movement, Roman Perin, "Rodnovery" defines the practised religion, while "Vedism" defines the philosophy or knowledge at its core. Vedism therefore is not a religion but pure knowledge. According to Bezverkhy, dogmatic religions such as Christianity, but also Brahmanism (the successor of Vedism in India), were created in order to control the masses. Bezverkhy codified his
Is Religion Dangerous? way, and substitute rhetoric for analysis". He suggests that it is impossible to give a satisfactory universal definition of religion, and that early opponents of religion such as Edward Taylor, James Frazer and Émile Durkheim were indulging in "scholarly fantazising" about forms of primitive religion which were refuted by more rigorous studies such as "Theories of Primitive Religion" by Evans-Pritchard. "Unfortunately some writers have not yet realised this", such as Daniel Dennett in "Breaking the Spell", who "does not seem to realise that the spell was broken as long ago as 1884 when E. B. Tylor was appointed to a