My point is that god created everything, an example being happiness, but everything negative is simply a lack of what he created, so he did not create them.

That is one of the most non-answers I have read on these debates. You can not both claim God created everything with happiness being a thing, and then claim that God did not create everything because negative happiness - evil - is not a thing. If good is a thing, and evil is the opposite of good, then evil must also be a thing. If God created everyTHING then God created evil or God did not create everyTHING and therefore he is not God.

Your answer really reads that God created everything that you want to credit him with but anything that does not stand up to what you want to attribute to God either doesn't exist or he is not responsible.

Would you like to try this one again?

No because we all know that elves do not exist.

How? How do you know that elves do not exist? How do you know that elves are not outside of space, time, dimension, and matter, just as many Christians claim God is? What proof do you have to support the lack of believe in elves?

I can show you just as many ancient books, writings, and stories that support and promote the concept that elves exist as I can that Jesus did. I can prove that for many centuries people believed with all their hearts that elves were real, just as people do today in their belief of God. I can show that elves had super-natural powers, outside of space, time, and dimension, just as are attributed to God. I can even show that elves preformed miracles - changeling babies, that they may have been immortal, that they lived in another dimension ...

Yet, without hesitation you tell me 'there are no elves'?

I answered this question with the first topic in my response, but in reality I am only repeating what my theology teacher said and I was arguing with you on the point to see how you would refute what I said. In reality the idea that all of the negative things are just positive things that are lacking sounds like it was made up to me. Just an excuse to make sure we know that god is all good. It all sounds sketchy.

It is sketchy. The answer you gave me above is not an answer, its an excuse, its a 'Get Out of Jail Free' clause.

Go and read Genesis on the creation of the earth, both versions. Whether or not you believe this story is actual historic fact or an oral story that comes out of an ancient desert tribe, it is the total foundation of Christianity!

First there was only God - so there was nothing else. Everything is that garden comes from God because God, by the story, is the only source. If you can not fully justify this story with your faith, then you can not justify anything that comes after it.

So everything in the Garden of Eden had to have been created by God, there is no other source.

Genesis says God created ever animal and man to its own nature. So God created Adam and Ev innocent, the opposite of guilty or as the Bible likes to say 'knowledgeable'.

Ev disobeys God, eats the apple, let's sin into the world, God punishes all human life for the act of one woman, and suddenly we are all sinners domed to Hell without God.

So, who created the serpent? Did God create the serpent to its own nature? If so, who created sin? And, as you read, ask yourself who lied to Ev - was it the serpent, or was it God?

Either God, who created everything, created the serpent with sin as his nature or God is the original sinner because it wasn't the serpent that lied to Ev ... it was God!

And, while some will tell you that the serpent is really the Angel Lucifer, whom God cast from Heaven, who created the Angels?

And, some will tell you that this story is an allegory, but ask yourself, Do animals need to worship God or have a religion to keep them from going to Hell? Are animals, by nature, sinful? Isn't the concept of going to eternal Hell more terrifying that just dying? Do animals get off easy ???

Without the Genesis story to bring sin into the world, to make one woman sinful, to punish every human who is born to her by becoming sinful, and with a sinful nature needing divine redemption ... would there be any need for a God? Would there be any reason for believing or practicing a religion?

Remember as you read Genesis and then come back to answer these questions ... Ev didn't eat from the Tree of Sin, she ate from the Tree of Knowledge!

Without sin, without eternal punishment for sin, there would be no reason for either Heaven or Hell.