News Do you care if Israel Folau returns to the NRL?

[southwalesrabbitoh]

As an atheist I was conflicted about if I should be offended or not lol

You're agnostic, atheism doesn't exist, as you can't prove there isn't a God.

 

[Shark62]

You're agnostic, atheism doesn't exist, as you can't prove there isn't a God.

Im a couldn’t give a feckist. If there is a god I don’t care.

 

[Albert Rosenfeld]

Israel should come back to Melbourne Storm to play in the centres under coach and apostle Craig Bellamy.

 

[Bazal]

Not sure Izzy would be keen to be coached by a lesbian tennis player

 

[Perth Red]

There were quite a few that held very similar views to the ones I'm expressing, some of them where much more intelligent and articulate than you and I could ever hope to be and wrote some amazing pieces on philosophy and politics back in the day that should be mandatory reading for every kid in school but isn't.

One of them called Martin Niemöller wrote an amazing poem that you should read, it's called First they came...

And seriously comparing me to Nazis, I know that you're better than that PR...



So basically offensive speech should be illegal and/or punishable right!

But where does that principle end? Because literally everything can be/is offensive to somebody!

Who is deciding what is and isn't offensive speech, and on the authority of whom?

Lets take the current example of who is or isn't going to heaven, in my humble opinion not only are gays not going to heaven, nobody at all is going to heaven, because heaven almost certainly doesn't exist and obviously it is impossible to go somewhere that doesn't exist. Using the same standard of offense that is being used in Israel's case I've just said something deeply offensive, possibly discriminatory, and damaging to everybody on the planet, so should I be punished for saying that?!
Or is it only members of certain ideological groups that we don't like that should be punished for their offensive opinions?

And what happens when the inevitable happens and another political/ideological group becomes the majority and holds the power that your political/ideological group has created of being the arbiters of what is and isn't offensive, and they decide that opinions that you hold are offensive and that as such you should be punished?
On what principle are you going to argue against that punishment when it's you that is next in line?
The principle of it's okay for yea but not for me?!



Ahh, I see, so we're going to be ideological authoritarians, anybody who disagrees with us is inherently bad and/or dangerous, and should either be forced to agree with us or punished...

When are we forming the Inquisition to hunt down and punish those whose ideologies/beliefs we disagreed with?!

1. I wasn’t comparing you personally to nazis, I was comparing the notion that people, should be allowed to say whatever they like about a group of people without any consequence and where history has shown that can lead to.

2. Who decides what is acceptable and isn’t? Wel, society does, always has, always will in a democratic country.

3. You seem to be calling for a level of anarchy, do what you want, say want you want no consequence? society doesn’t work like that. It evolves, values change, belief systems change we slowly move forward and realise demonising minority groups or people that are different in some way isn’t an acceptable thing to do.

I guess until you are in one of those persecuted minorities it is difficult to truly appreciate the harm words can do.

 

[Perth Red]

You're agnostic, atheism doesn't exist, as you can't prove there isn't a God.

No I’m an atheist, I believe there isn’t such a thing as gods or angels or devils. My faith is science, evidence and facts, not fictional writings of some blokes thousands of years ago.

 

[Albert Rosenfeld]

No I’m an atheist, I believe there isn’t such a thing as gods or angels or devils. My faith is science, evidence and facts, not fictional writings of some blokes thousands of years ago.

It is people like you that make other rugby league fans wary of inviting Perth into the NRL.

Israel Folau would make a marvelous full back or centre for a Perth NRL franchise -- that is if Melbourne Storm doesn't sign him first..

 

[Albert Rosenfeld]

Not sure Izzy would be keen to be coached by a lesbian tennis player

Which lesbian tennis player are you referring to?

 

[firechild]

You're agnostic, atheism doesn't exist, as you can't prove there isn't a God.

You clearly don't understand the meaning of atheism.

 

[Foreign Legion]

I totally disagree with you and think you are 100% wrong. Nazi's crushed opposing voices and the first thing they did was take over and control the media, effectively controlling the narrative and ending free speech. Then they cleared out the librarys. Pretty much the same as Stalin & Mao in totalitarian regimes on the left. This is the problem, who determines what speech is acceptable? In Germany it was VERY clear who made that delineation, and thats the problem.

Germany (and Russia) needed the opposite of what you are talking about, they needed MORE unrestrained speech and more opposing voices to be heard. You couldnt be more wrong but this is not the place to discuss it, nor does it have much to do with Folau.

FACT

At one point Hitler couldn't except that Jesus was Jewish so the Nazi regime started telling churches that Jesus was of Aryan race and must preach this in churches.

 

[Shark62]

https://www.smh.com.au/sport/rugby-...act-it-has-is-undeniable-20190502-p51j8i.html

 

[Zadar]

No I’m an atheist, I believe there isn’t such a thing as gods or angels or devils. My faith is science, evidence and facts, not fictional writings of some blokes thousands of years ago.

the observed conditions are extrapolated backwards in time using the known laws of physics, the prediction is that just before a period of very high density there was a singularity which is typically associated with the Big Bang. Physicists are undecided whether this means the universe began from a singularity, or that current knowledge is insufficient to describe the universe at that time.

Now that sounds more like a fable than the other one.

 

[Foreign Legion]

.... and by the way we have been getting things wrong since the dawn of time...

 

[gerg]

Under English common law (which Australia and the rest of the Anglosphere inherited from the British Empire) yes we have/had freedom of speech as a founding principle. However because English common law isn't codified in law (unlike in the American bill of rights), it's been easily eroded and manipulated overtime in all the Anglosphere countries (with the exception of the USA, but that's another subject) to the point where effectively none of them have freedom of speech anymore. It's rather terribly sad actually...

So in short, no. Like you say Freedom of speech is a myth and if you disagree I challenge anybody to approach a police officer and express your freedom of speech directly to them.

 

[Bazal]

Which lesbian tennis player are you referring to?

Craig Bellamy

 

[t-ba]

We are now getting to a point where a sports organisation firing a high profile moron for playing social media chicken with his employer is apparently a direct parallel to the Nazis.

Get a grip you f**king idiots.

 

[Bazal]

We are now getting to a point where a sports organisation firing a high profile moron for playing social media chicken with his employer is apparently a direct parallel to the Nazis.

Get a grip you f**king idiots.

 

[t-ba]

You're agnostic, atheism doesn't exist, as you can't prove there isn't a God.

Missed that one, lol.

That means religiosity can't exist because you can't prove there is god.

 

[The Great Dane]

Suicide rates among groups that are persecuted are much higher than they are in the general population, this is especially true on the gay community. You indicate that this should be acceptable because there is no physical violence (possibly a grey area around inciting violence) but these types of comments can have a significant impact on certain people, in this case I would suggest young gay Polynesian kids.

That "impact" is totally unquantifiable and unfalsifiable, you literally cannot prove that kid x or x amount of young gay men committed suicide because of Folau's comments, or that those comments contributed to their their suicide at all, and nor could anybody prove they didn't contribute.

Deconstructing human rights based on such unfalsifiable claims is not only dangerous it's absolutely absurd.

Furthermore as a person that has quite a bit of experience with suicide I can tell you right now, with 100% certainty, that any young gay Polynesian men that committed suicide did so because of persecution and/or ostracisation by their peer group, family, or community, and/or because of a feeling of total lack of hope because of their personal situation, not because some random football star that they've more than likely never meet let alone know in any personal way thinks that when they die they are going to go to place that they more likely than not don't even believe in.

Nobody is saying these people can't hold these opinions (as we are allowed to hold opinions on those that make such comments), but organisations have a right to take actions that distance themselves from these types of comments.

Ahh, but where does that idea end in principle?!

Does that mean that banks have the right to deny homophobes their services to avoid association with them?

What about utility companies?

And is it only homophobes that we're going to ostracise from society by making them totally unemployable and totally fair game for businesses to deny services to or are we going to do the same to other undesirable groups?

And who is deciding which alleged homophobes are in fact actually homophobes that it's ok to ostracise and which are falsely accused?

Do you not see what a slippery slope is being created.

 

[The Great Dane]

1. I wasn’t comparing you personally to nazis, I was comparing the notion that people, should be allowed to say whatever they like about a group of people without any consequence and where history has shown that can lead to.

The problem in Nazi Germany wasn't that people were saying whatever they wanted about a group of people without any consequence, it was that the Nazis had forcibly shutdown competition to their ideas by restricting the free speech of their political and ideological opponents through threats of violence and ostracisation.

They would ruin the people who spoke out against them's lives in a tactic to cow other people that disagreed with them into compliance so that they maintained as absolute control over the public discourse as possible.

In other words the problem with Nazi Germany was that they crushed the free speech of people with opposing ideas (often they'd say things like that persons speech was dangerous or offensive to Germany and/or true German patriots and that because of it's offensive nature it must be stopped), specifically so they could say what they wanted without competition.

You know that poem I told you about before, it's all about the cowardice of the German intellectuals and powerful people that were cowed into compliance by the Nazis...

2. Who decides what is acceptable and isn’t? Wel, society does, always has, always will in a democratic country.

So might makes right then, or is it the tyranny of the majority?

Either way, what happens when "society" holds a bad opinion and is using it's power to ostracise and persecute people with a good opinion, for example how do you reckon the civil rights movement in the US would have gone if they weren't protected by free-speech? What about the suffragist movement?

That is literally what free speech is for, to protect the ability of the minority to share their ideas without reprisal, because often "society", the majority, has it wrong.

3. You seem to be calling for a level of anarchy, do what you want, say want you want no consequence? society doesn’t work like that. It evolves, values change, belief systems change we slowly move forward and realise demonising minority groups or people that are different in some way isn’t an acceptable thing to do.

You really murdered that straw-man PR, really I'm impressed. . .

I guess until you are in one of those persecuted minorities it is difficult to truly appreciate the harm words can do.

For all you know I am in one of those minorities...