> Only if that particular sect's holy book is not from God.
Every sect considers their holy book(s) to be from god, so that claim is meaningless unless you are a member of that sect.
In terms of explaining "why does god allow evil to happen", that's the answer given by a subset of Christian sects. It's far from the only answer given by all religions (and nonreligious philosophies), or even all Christians.
I was just pointing out that you were offering only one of many different answers. Since god has yet to offer any unambiguous explanations or clarifications, it's probably wise to be aware that there is no one accepted answer here.
No, the claim is not meaningless. Is any of the holy books actually written (dictated/inspired) by God or a god? That is an objective claim, true or false on its own merit, regardless of whether you are a member of that sect.
But of course there are two problems. 1) There are so many claims, how do you check them all? 2) How do you actually check even one of them? What is your criterion for deciding?
> Since god has yet to offer any unambiguous explanations or clarifications...
Has he? That's the question. You're assuming the answer. (Unless you're leaning on "unambiguous", and saying that, since there's no one clear book, there's no unambiguous answer.)
I mean, isn't the bible written by apostles etc? Not God? Matthew, Mark, Luke and John just wrote down what Jesus said God told him, and Christians treat that as (literal) gospel. Is there a part of the bible that says, unambiguously, "I, God, am writing this down, and here is what to do and what not to do in order to be a good Christian"
>I mean, isn't the bible written by apostles etc? Not God? Matthew, Mark, Luke and John just wrote down what Jesus said God told him
No. The gospels were not actually written by the apostles. All of the academic and historical evidence suggests that they were written by anonymous authors writing in the name of the apostles (which was a common thing at the time) about a century after Jesus' death.
Pretty close. There are parts that clearly say "God said". There are parts that are history, that are not literally "God said this".
But then you get to II Timothy 3:16, which says, "All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness". It claims that God inspired the authors. That kind of bootstraps the rest of the book into "God said" territory.
You can be inspired by someone else and it not be their direct words. What parts are written like "I, God, am saying this", rather than "God told me this (I promise)"? GPs point is that the book is "from God", and I'd only really consider it to be "from God" if God wrote it
