SoundsRight wrote: » How so? There's a very strong Christian vein running through the squad. It's what attracted a lot of the big name South Africans to the province. The shenaningans of Jackson & co were an aberration.
eagle eye wrote: » This is absolutely ridiculous anyways. It's social media ruling the world again. Social media needs to be ended imo, the amount of stupidity is overwhelming.
eagle eye wrote: » What rule did he break..
eagle eye wrote: » All I see is a religious belief that all the people he mentioned are committing sin and need to repent.
sydthebeat wrote: » first off and most importantly, the IRFU have to sanction any new signing... and they certainly are not going to sanction Folau secondly...... it was clearly stated that, though the players were found not guilty of the crime, they were guilty of breaching the IRFU and Ulster Rugbys "respect, inclusivity and integrity" values. Theres no way anyone can argue that Folaus extreme views are aligned with these values. Thirdly, Kingspan, URs biggest sponsor is a multinational company with a corporate social responsibility policy which promotes diversity and inclusivity.... and would certainly have issues with a player with Folaus views playing under their banner in a stadium named by them. so.... Folau will not be signing for ulster
SoundsRight wrote: » The IRFU have previously signed off on a player with a failed doping test. I'd be very surprised if they blocked a move for Folau. I'm sure Kingspan would prefer having a world class player help fill the stadium and boosting the chance of silverware instead of trying to appeasing some modern day puritans.
sydthebeat wrote: its ok.... you dont understand what he did wrong. Thats fair enough. to a lot of people, including his employers... its plainly obvious what he did wrong, and obviously its their understanding that matters.
eagle eye wrote: » He didn't do anything wrong.
eagle eye wrote: » There is no hate speech. Anybody who believes there is hate speech in what he said is crazy imo.
eagle eye wrote: » So basically crazies versus crazy. That just came to me now. Why didn't I realise that before I started posting in this thread?!
sydthebeat wrote: good question to ask yourself
eagle eye wrote: » Just so we are clear on things. I've no issue with you. We are just in disagreement about the rights of others as regards free speech and what we consider hate speech. I've made it clear in this thread that I don't share Folau's beliefs. I disagree with him as regards basically everything. My argument has nothing to do with who is right or wrong, it's about the right to air your views.
King Mob wrote: If he had said "black people are going to hell", would that be hate speech?
smacl wrote: » Nothing to do with my belief. You're previous argument, specifically "although it doesn't exist, suggesting that homosexuals deserve to go to such a place is hate speech", is predicated on the non-existence of hell.
Firstly, not all Christians even believe in hell.
Secondly, most Christians aren't literalist bible-thumpers and quietly ignore the deeply homophobic sections of Romans and Leviticus.
You are making a mistake in implying that most Christians are defined by their religion. Most demonstrably diverge from their religion where it becomes openly hateful and repressive. The few more extreme elements repeatedly fail to rally the more moderate masses as has been seen in local referendums here.
I agree, I think many aspects of the bible are homophobic and misogynistic, but then so are most texts from that era. This leaves those who identify as Christians in a bit of a dilemma with a number of possible options; 1) Stick with the bits they like and simply ignore the nasty stuff, e.g. a-la-carte Catholics. 2) Dump the religion entirely and become atheists or choose an alternative religion. 3) Change over to a church that rejects and re-interprets the meaning of Christianity based on modern social norms, e.g. Michael Burrows version of Anglican Christianity.
4) Become or a remain a Christian that views a very literal interpretation of the bible to be the one true faith, including all that is offensive.
Relatively few choose this last option, but many of those that do seem to be very vocal about it. They get called out for preaching hate speech because that is what they are doing and it is by their own choice. This is the category Folau falls into in my opinion.
smacl wrote: » Yes, I can state that they are in all probability a nonsense. They are a supposition with no objective support whatsoever. We can imagine an infinite number of alternate contradictory possibilities, e.g. hell does not exist and gay people go there, hell does exist but only straight people get sent there, when we die we all end up in the good place, etc, etc... Given an infinite number of contradictory possibilities, only one can be true. In the absence of supporting evidence each is as likely to be true as any other. Thus the likelihood of any one being true is one divided infinity, and Folau's supposition is infinitely unlikely to be true. Saying every word in the bible is truth is a bit like playing the euromillions lottery in the firm knowledge that you'll win, only orders of magnitude less likely. As such it can reasonably be considered delusional.
antiskeptic wrote: » You'll have to find a way to slot the word "unrepentent" in there somewhere in order to compare apples and apples.
antiskeptic wrote: » if you don't believe hell exists then you think Folau is engaging in hate speech. If Folau does believe in hell then he doesn't think he's engaging in hate speech.
I would have thought that homosexual-acts-a-sin would be the predominant view in Christianity. My own view is that a person becomes a Christian by divine act (the act being triggered by a response to God (even if they don't realise they are responding to God) by a person. That's the only way it can occur. Cultural Christianity, on the otherhand, produces lots of people who self identify as Christians. That doesn't mean they are Christians in the only way outlined above.
I think your confusing literalism with thought-out theology. A literalist see no nuance, no parable (unless stated to be so), no symbolism. A thought-out theology can hold to things that are distasteful to present day minds, having built up a picture of the whys and wherefores contained in the bible. My own view is that Ireland is a predominantly non-Christian country and that most of the Christians in it aren't Christians as defined earlier.
antiskeptic wrote: » That probability "calculation" is only relevant to you. You picking out the right one from a billion possibilities gives YOU a low probability of getting it right. Telling a euromillions winner that he has a low probability of winning is a different matter. You don't know whether Folau is right or wrong.
King Mob wrote: » Ok then. If he said "black people who do not repent for being black are going to hell"... Hate speech or no?
eagle eye wrote: » As far as I'm aware there is nothing about that in the bible.
King Mob wrote: » Dodging the question. Please try again. If he had said that, would it have been hate speech?
recedite wrote: » If my aunt had testicles, would she be my uncle?
King Mob wrote: » It's pretty simple and direct and has a yes or no answer.
King Mob wrote: Dodging the question. Please try again. If he had said that, would it have been hate speech?
King Mob wrote: » And again, the question is dodged. It's pretty simple and direct and has a yes or no answer. I have a pretty good idea of why I've had to ask 3 times now... If he said "black people who do not repent for being black are going to hell"... Hate speech or no?
eagle eye wrote: » I'm not dodging your stupid comparison. I've already gave an answer to that earlier in the thread.
eagle eye wrote: » As I said it's not in the Bible as far as I'm aware so it's not comparable.
recedite wrote: » As with my question. Whats the answer? My question is equally as relevant as yours.
splinter65 wrote: » But he didn’t say that. It’d be odd if he did, considering he’s black...
King Mob wrote: Ok, so? Why would that make a difference? Is saying the same thing about gay people only not hate speech because it's in the bible?
eagle eye wrote: » If he is a follower of a religion which teaches him, and the Bible says, that homosexual activity is sinful then it's not hate speech. The same applies to anything else which is in the Bible.
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