Humankind, evil, good: the stuff of philosophic speculation - not, actually, the basic questions of religion, per se. Speculation on the nature of ourselves - our humanness and the spiritual being (if any) within us requires a certain amount of leisure, a commodity in short supply when mankind felt its first aching longings to know about things larger than one's own, individual existence. Those first searchers along the far horizons, the primeval "priests," still only had a little time free from the daily struggle for existence. Their speculations were of the practical sort. Why does the Nile overflow? Why does the sun rise and give us warmth? Or, giving us warmth, why does it also rise in some seasons and not give warmth? Understanding that there were greater forces at work than he could understand, early speculative man arrived at the conclusions that those forces were "gods."
Later, as humans found some respite from a daily struggle for existence, there came time to extend their early religious thoughts into less concrete areas. Again, practicality was the original impetus. If the gods bring rain, how do we please them in order to assure enough - but not too much - rainfall? If our enemies, who worship other gods, prosper at our expense, is it because we are doing something wrong, or because our gods are weaker than their gods, or because their gods are true gods and ours are false?
From this practical foundation, as leisure time expanded still further (slavery, conquest and development of trade economies had their material benefits, after all), it was still another step up into speculations about the human condition not tied so specifically to geographical considerations. Once freed from ties to the land, humankind found the possibility of kinship with others of different kith - people bound together by shared spiritual experiences. Concepts of good and evil evolved. All remained tied, to greater or lesser degre...