There are some questions that really can dent our smug feelings of righteous political correctness.

Sir, Gillian Tett, with respect to the barbarous murders that Isis is showing off in videos, gives a “loud Amen” to Frances Larson, an anthropologist at Durham University, when he argues: “There is no triumph in the killer’s actions until we watch…Modern technology may offer a hiding place to voyeurs but it can also give a voice to human decency.” “To stop horror, turn it off”, February 7.

I have not seen those videos, and I was also educated to share into that “Amen”.

But, but, but, in “Thinking” 2013, Daniel C. Dennet, a Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University, seriously dented my smug feeling of righteous political correctness when asking:

“Suppose we face some horrific, terrible enemy, another Hitler or something really, really bad, and here’s two different armies that we could use to defend ourselves. I’ll call them the Gold Army and the Silver Army: same numbers, same training and weaponry… The difference is that the Gold Army has been convinced that God is on their side and this is the cause of righteousness, and it’s as simple as that. The Silver Army is entirely composed by economists. They are all making side insurance bets and calculating the odds of everything. Which army do you want on the frontline?”

And Dennet further drives that wedge of doubt into us by quoting William James’ “The variety of religious experience” with: “Far better it is for an army to be too savage, too cruel too barbarous, than to posses too much sentimentality and human reasonableness”.

And then I make it so much worse for myself by telling me: Don’t answer that as Per Kurowski, answer that as Per Kurowski the father and grandfather.

As an anthropologist, which army would Gillian Tett prefer?

Financial Times is equally a promoter of “metaphysical presumptions”

Sir your ‘Faith in numbers” May 1 is truly odious in the way you arrogantly and ironically joke about religious beliefs while blithely ignoring how much you yourself have been helping to give credence to bank regulations that seem to be just the same or even more based on “metaphysical presumptions”.

Or what would you call having the capital requirements for our banks based on some opinions of the credit rating agencies and as arbitrarily weighted by the high priests of the Basel Committee? If that is not pure purposeless mumbo-jumbo or hocus-pocus, what is?

What discount rate should be applied to analyze the benefits of the unborn?

Sir, Nicholas Stern, in order to tell us that the “Gains from greenhouse action outweigh the costs” (November 8) had also to argue that “we cannot avoid the ethical issues involved in allocations between generations” so that he could be allowed to use the low discount factors that validates his cost-benefit analysis. When so coincidentally FT´s front page that very same day carried the story on “Big Four firms in call to switch to real-time reporting” this really helps to illustrate the conflicts between the short terms results we all expect and the long term actions the world needs.

Recently I read a small publication titled “Faiths and the environment” that spoke about some pioneering work supported by the World Bank aimed to furthering whatever links could exist between those two and since given that religious groups are in fact one of the very few driving forces behind helping us to take a longer perspective on issues they could by prioritizing more the environment really assist us in lowering the high discount rates that prevail out there.

The second thought picks up on what Stern says about “the needs of future generations should be represented in decision-making” which reminds us of the urgent need to get some more real representation of the young and perhaps even the unborn into our democracies… and I mean before they are completely taken over by the baby boomers.