It is 'do I do this action because I am told it is just, or do I do it because it is just?' It is the way we examine how we decide what is good and evil.
Unless there is a G-d and you hear his voice the only way you have to determine whether something is just is by what you were told by others.
As for the general theme that homo sapiens followed instincts of mutual aid, I direct your attention to pre-Judeo-Christian, animist peoples; to tribal systems which insisted that the results of the hunt be shared out amongst the community; to the guild system; to the Jura Federation of the late 1800s and many more examples where humanity comes together to free itself from depravity and deprevation.
Yes, but did the _animists_ do that without believing in a higher power they don't control?
I am looking for grand examples of tribes/peoples that used humanist systems of ethics rather than faith-based such. I believe the claim was made that such systems are obviously superior? So where are they?
As for the animist tribal systems; they were based on beliefs in the supernatural, not humanism, and as we can see among the remnants of these systems, they were quite barbaric. The modern romantic version of how tribal systems worked is quite different from how they did and still do work.
I'll give you an example.
One of the tribal conventions based on sharing amongs the community is the so-called blood feud which allowed one clan to avenge the death of a family member by killing the perpetrator or one of the clan of the perpetrator. This practice is a typical outgrowth of the animist tribal system humanity used for thousands of years. It's still common in more primitive corners of the world.
Jewish law, aka the Bible, introduced the concept of "cities of refuge". Those were cities (the Bible lists six) in which accused perpetrators of manslaughter who had been judged innocent could escape the blood feud and within which they would be safe from the clan of the victim.
In time laws against blood feuds became more common. But those laws always came "from above", i.e. were made by an authority who claimed they represented G-d's will and thus had jurisdiction to replace ancient customs the tribes came up with cooperatively.
I very much prefer the deity-based religion over the tribal cooperation system, thank you very much.
Another good example is women's rights.
In tribal societies, women are essentially property. They were (and are) sold to prospective husbands. It was the Torah (for the Jews) and the Quran (for Arabs) who first defined any kind of rights of women in those tribal societies. G-d (or people pretending to speak for G-d) introduced laws that the tribes were unable to make (or were unable to make and enforce without resorting to a claim that G-d wants those laws).
(Now don't confuse followers of pre-Islamic tribal rituals who claim to be Muslims but violate Islamic law regarding women with Islam!)
Either that, or the rules are convenient prescriptions made by the ruling class - the decree to worship only one god etc., thus ensuring the primacy of the priesthood. Or, more secularly, the enshrinement of privileged forms of property, which for centuries preserved rich hunting grounds (and entire species) for the amusement of the rich.
I was not aware that the priestly caste in Judaism was generally richer than the other tribes.
The decree to worship only one god didn't help the priesthood. Monotheism takes away from the power of the priesthood because people can approach one god much better than they can approach an entire pantheon.
This is why you historically find huge numbers of of powerful priests in polytheistic societies. In monotheism, priests are very different from polytheistic priests.
When Pharaoh Akhenaten introduded a monotheistic system in Egypt, the priesthood was very opposed to it. And after the Pharaoh's death, the old polytheistic system came back and was very much promoted by the priests. One theory goes that Moses was one of the priests of the monotheistic Egyptian religion and that the Israelites were a band of his followers.
Either way, the idea that monotheism is some sort of mechanism used by the priesthood to remain in power is false. Quite the opposite is true.
That is 'thou shalt not steal' is a religious co-opting of the attitude 'ergh, stealing', an attitude stemming from our instinctual dislike of those who take possession of certain things to the detriment of others.
There is no such attitude and people do not agree about what things can be owned and whether ownership exists and whether everyone has a right to own things or not.
Try explaining to a nomadic people that they have an attitute towards stealing "your" land. You might instead find that nomadic societies often have no concept of land ownership at all.
You are trying to explain natural law to me. But the problem is that there isn't one.
