What sense of Justice? Humanity has, for almost all of it's entire history, engaged in slavery of one form or another.

1) You are making an unsubstantiated assumption that there is a sense of justice. 2) the "why do humans have right or wrong if not from God" argument has been tried and refuted to death because it's very weak. Although there is no way to precisely measure such things, good luck proving the level of human justice somehow outweighs the level of human injustice. We can't even collectively agree what that is. If you don't believe that make a topic about abortion, guns or gay marriage and it becomes evident that humans despite the "built-in" sense of justice some claim are capable of being on opposite ends of such issues. People claiming to be following God's will have enslaved, tortured, raped and warred on each other throughout history. "Right" and "Wrong" are human constructs necessary for the function of an orderly society and subject to change at any time. It was "Right" in the minds of the majority of this country to own people a couple of hundred years ago. It was "right" for women not to vote a hundred years ago. We define these terms as needed. Nobody claims it is "by chance" but just the opposite; as an advanced species we are capable of making such constructs for the greater good in the pragmatic sense of the term.

Evolution can provide explanations for the innate sense that humans have of right and wrong, although that is not its main focus. However, one does not need to presume that a divine force produced human beings in order to account for man's sense of morality. Morality ultimately comes from simple perception: we perceive the interconnectedness and unity of reality, in completely ordinary ways. That includes things like "my actions affect others and they affect me", it explains why we respond to the pain of others, it does not require magical thinking. All one has to do to get a flavor of this is to watch a movie where the child star suffers at the hands of some terrible circumstance. What is going on? The viewer is *identifying* with the protagonist. Why? Because the viewer is not actually *separate* from the protagonist in the first place! Not in any absolute sense. The reason questions like this come up is because, particularly in the West, we've been conditioned from childhood to think that each person is a separate entity, and from that comes fallacies like the notion that pursuing ego desires to the exclusion of all other considerations just might work as a strategy for happiness. This is false, it has always been false, it is universally false. A human being is not separate from the rest of the universe, a human is integrally connected in myriad ways. So, someone who perceives that connection -- which is completely natural and normal for a healthy, mature individual -- senses others and responds to others and cares about others. Justice and morality and every other ethical concern arise naturally from that. Without any magic dust or miraculous doings. And it's not a function of evolution, other than the fact that evolution produced the capacity to perceive reality as it is.

As people 'evolve' (as individuals, groups, & as a species) & come in contact with other people, many ('tho surely not all) individuals & societies develop a 'sense of justice' , & a determination of (what is) 'right or wrong'. As individuals & as 'a group', we are not 'perfect', but ideally, can merely strive to be. Also, what is 'right or wrong', & what is 'just' may easily vary from indiv.-to-indiv., society-to-society, from 'time-to-time', & upon the circumstances. It very may well have come from the 'idea' contained in the 'Golden Rule', before there was one!

well, justice and morals contributs to a stable society. humans are social animals. sometimes you have to show restraint and patience just to survive, and especially have to if you want to work with others without conflict. justice may just be something we developed out of a need to survive?

The concept of good actions and wrong actions, as well as justice and injustice, exists in almost any species with any kind of meaningful social interaction. The idea that this is only a recent human conception is due to the recent human conception of our grandeur.

Behaving in a manner that causes others to see you as a threat is not a survival trait, so the others adapt to deal with the threat. Survival of the fittest. Too easy.

Please provide ANY evidence for this sense of justice. Any way you believe that we arrived in the here and now, right and wrong have been relative through time.

We are not born with a "sense of justice" or any values. We learn these from our families or guardians. Trying to align values like "justice" with evolution and science is just poppycock.

I don't know enough about the subject, but I can give you an outline. One of the things that emerges again and again in evolution is cooperative behavior. It happens even at the cellular level, where it is believed that the component parts of a cell are actually the specialized descendants of smaller single-cell organisms, surrounded by a single membrane. We see cooperative behavior in all sorts of animal groups, from flocks of birds, to herds of elephants, to schools of dolphins. Researchers have directly observed monkeys behaving as though 'justice' (or, at least, 'fairness') is an important value to them http://www.primates.com/monkeys/fairness.html From the 'selfish gene' perspective, sometimes if one can't spread ones own genes successfully, spreading ones relative's genes is almost as good (since their genomes are very similar). I hope this helps.

it is the same concept of putting your hand over a fire, if it hurts you don't do it again. if seeing someone murdered is painful to the "average" person than a law is created. so breaking someone's heart will be illegal in the future at the rate of sqeamishness we're seeing from the christian right.

If the history of humanity is a show of justice, I'm gonna slap some butter on myself, stick my head in the oven and call myself a muffin

Mankind are evolved as humanitarians.

the zulu tribe of africa has a religious concept called "ubuntu" (operating sytem has been named ofter it based on linux. the idea is that we are human because we interact with humans. we develope mentally based on our exposure. when it is convient for a society to work together they do so, as moongrim stated(slavery has always existed in some form) when convient to do otherwise then otherwise is done...leading to it being culturally acceptable. justice is relitive to time and place. and we adopt our suroundings mentally. but this is sompliy not instant. racism still exist in the USA and many parts of the world. it is phasing out as generations progress. society evolves in it's own course.

I'm sure even cavemen could see that the actions of some were just wrong, unhelpful to the group, meaning some action is right and some action is wrong. maybe helpful and hurtful would work better for you?

Man is, above all, the social animal. The outstanding fact about humans is that we live in groups - sometimes enormous groups. Man is not physically strong compared to other animals. And particularly, children are spectacularly weak compared to other animals for a spectacularly long time. The only way humanity survives is by co-operation: isolated humans or couples die, from one cause or another, fairly soon. Only by ganging together, initially in tribes and latterly in cities, can humans survive. Living, as we do, in groups requires a sense of justice, of favours owed, of debts to be repaid. To survive, you accept favours from others which you cannot return until later, and you do the same for others. But if we had no sense of fairness, of justice, a selfish person could pull the whole group down by taking and not giving. So the sense of fairness might be regarded as *the* thing that makes human civilisation possible. Groups of humans without it cannot survive. Chimpanzees show a simple version of the same thing.

I wont go into detail because i would have to be writing forever, but the fact is evolutionary theory does account for our sense of right and wrong. I have some books i'd reccomend ; Richard Dawkins the god delusion, Robert Hinde's why good is good, Micheal Shermer's The science of good and evil, Robert Buckman's can we be good without god? And Marc Hauser's Moral Minds. These are really good books, even if you dont agree whith them their really interesting and its always good to see both sides of everything.

The evolutionary theory accounts for the post constabulary period in the megalomaniac era. When justice is evolved in the human heart the juxtapose position is reflation upon the ever shifting vagary of the preceding era. Of course you could say that a look at the rheum would answer the question with great perturbation but then I think to look at the evolution of the comas man is equal to the freestone of the same.

Some good answers already given and here's another perspective focussing on the role of leadership. It is clear that every person does not have the same degree of moral awareness/ moral intelligence and sense of justice. Individuals with a heightened sense of justice have an easier time getting people to co-operate with them and respect and trust them. This makes them natural "leaders of men". If not official leaders of society e.g. tribal chiefs, kings, presidents, they could play other leadership roles i.e. judges, shamans, tribal wise men/ women, influential activists (e.g. Martin Luther King, Gandhi). They occupy the moral high ground and become the authorities on moral issues. People refer and defer to them. So they get to write the rule book which gets passed down in legislation and tradition. My 2c.

The human being is an animal that cannot survive on its own. A sense of right and wrong is socially cohesive, and is therefore a survival factor.

wright and wrong are consepts we have developed due to our more evolved brains as we became more aware of the world around us we started to develope consepts such as wright and wrong so bacially evolution has given us intellegance and wright and wrong is just a product of that process.

groups that didn't have a sense of right and wrong, couldn't survive