Is sinning letting God and ourselves down?

You said:

“That leads me to the 4th Cornerstone:
The Nature of Man - Inherently Sinful

This is not a popular topic with contemporary society. We wish to hold
that while we may do bad things on occasion, we are, overall, not that bad.”

This is kind of interesting, the word “sin” is just a word -- and it is different in Russian, Turkish etc -- earlier we defined “sin” as a transgression of God’s law. Now you have extended “sin” into covering “bad things” (a highly relative term).

If “sin” only covers the former case of trangressing God’s Law then I guess atheists are a bit like Bobby Fischer, they do not recognize the law that is being handed down, so they don’t believe that they are transgressing anything. For instance, a Christian might say that a Muslim is committing a sin by worshipping Allah (a false idol), but a Muslim believes that he is doing the opposite to committing a sin by worshipping Allah. The Muslim does not recognize the sin, as he does not recognize the law that is being handed down.

The obvious conclusion is that to “sin” you have to believe that there is one True God and that He handed down those laws.

If it’s the latter case, where sin covers “bad things” then we need to define what these “bad things” are. Are “bad things” only those things that trangress God’s Law? If so, then the two cases are identical. If “bad things” are a superset of the trangression of God’s Law then what are they?

You later go on to say:

"Oh, that's okay. I'll give you a pass just because I know you tried."

But you meant that that really would not happen. Do you mean that God would not give you that pass unless you do something more than “try”? Or that that pass does not in fact exist (for anybody)?

I kind of agree with your #4, I think that it is in our nature to satisfy our pleasures rather than treat others as we would wish to be treated. We will satisfy our pleasures, massage our ids, even at the expense of treating others in a fashion that we would not wish to be treated ourselves.

I believe this to be true of any person in any religion.

Current song: “Don’t Let Me Down” – The Beatles