Oh come now, you can do better than that. Ayn Rand, Richard Mayburry, and a host of others have put forth ways to organize society that doesn't require a voice from Sinai telling people, "because I sayeth so". The key here is human rights. If people don't have a right to the wealth of others; then I don't think you can justify it.
We've already discussed my views on what the Bible teaches. It does not teach that the government is to be our instrument of charity. Nor does it teach that we are to force the world to live to our standard.
No, you misunderstand. I asked you the question because I wanted to see which way the discussion ought to go.
But since you bring it up, there are plenty of great examples of societies that explicitly rejected the "voice from Sinai," The French Revolution, and Communist Russia being a couple of particularly fine, if rather bloody, examples.
The key here is human rights. If people don't have a right to the wealth of others; then I don't think you can justify it.
Ah, but that's the rub. Without something like a voice from Sinai, we're free to pretty much define human rights in any old way, including ways that you say are wrong (and wrong because...?). The Founders were cognizant of this, which is why the Declaration says, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights..."
The central conceit of man-made philosophy is that it can comprehensively define how we ought to behave. The problem is it's impossible for any person or central committee to properly account for the many facets of human nature. People just don't behave the way they're "supposed" to behave, according to the principles laid down by the sages.
Ayn Rand is a perfect example of how a man-made, supposedly reason-based philosophy can fail. At root, she appears to have tried to create a philosophy that embodied the last 6 Commandments, without those troublesome first 4. (Well, perhaps it's better to say the last 5 without the first 5, for reasons stated below.)
The basis of her Objectivism, and its weakest point, is summed up in John Galt's oath "I swear by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."
The counter argument is simple: the moral obligations inherent in the relationship between parent and child, which touches both sides of that famous line, and upon contact Galt's oath simply withers like a slug exposed to salt.
A more general summary of Rand's philosophy is here:
http://aynrandlexicon.com/ayn-rand-ideas/introducing-objectivism.html, and her philosophy can be refuted in detail; however, the obvious fracture point occurs in Galt's oath. Just as an example, Rand held that "Reality exists as an objective absolute—facts are facts, independent of man’s feelings, wishes, hopes or fears." Well, OK ... and if we look at reality, i.e., nature, in its entirety, it doesn't look very much like the philosophy Rand claims to have derived from it.
