Well for me god never entered into it. I mean I went to Sunday school, I knew of the 10 commandments and all, but I never used those, or the bible, or the thought of god as a barometer for knowing the difference between good and bad. For me it was all about the other people in my life. You didn't harm them physically because you just didn't do it. If you did you were estranged either by your own mental instability, or by members of the group. The same thing would apply to steeling. Steeling upsets the apple cart. Where would we be if everyone went around taking things from each other? It's just obvious.
Now, as we grow up and our relationships become more complex, and others depend more on us, and we on them, you need to acquire wisdom. You need to be able to look down the road. You need to be able to understand the ramifications of your discissions. It's not easy. We all make mistakes. But we learn from them and get better and better as we go along and gain experience.
Frankly I'm baffled by the thought of not just having a moral compass on tap without even having to look for it. For me its always been there, I've just had to refine it.
There is such a thing as good instinct, but do we all have it?
There is also the natural tendancy of children to pick up the good habits of good example, your foundation might be beneith your knowing and still be the Bible that your family was following.
WE also have an instinct for vengence and it shows up early in life , stays with us till late , the natural instinct is not to get even , it is to overwhelm. Moses (or Hammerubi if you rather) was pioneering in suggesting limit on vengence ONLY an eye for the lost eye ONLY a tooth for the lost tooth , nature suggests makeing a meal of your offender if you can.
The inborn instinct for justice is very universal in humankind , but is so plastic that it can get used to anything. Philosophy and religion both advance on the bare knoledge of the diffrence between good and bad the accumulation of human experience and thoughts refine over time the use of the concepts.
But where do we come away with an instinctive knoledge of good and evil in the first place? Tigers are innocent of it , they don't seem to feel the lack.
Genesis seems to state that God created man a creature with no knoledge of a diffrence between good and evil and God was a friend of this creature. We have learned that diffrence and no longer share the Tigers innocence.
Scientific American recently printed an article about the shrinking Human brain. Apparently Cro Magnion man was anitomicly very simular to modern man but had a more massive brain by about the volume of a tennis ball.
Perhaps being a wild man requires a lot of alertness , being domesticated we need less our alert senses and more a reliance on each other and each to the other being reliable.
What happened to turn the wolf into the dog is happening to us and we are the agent of the change in both instances, was this Gods will or is God being tolerant of our rebellion?