This actually did not fix the problem. Inserted the setting in the database and it was still failing. Everything was pointing to an issue with nginx. nginx -t fails if the container cannot access the internet. Changed the discourse.conf file at line 220.
from:
proxy_pass https://avatars.discourse.org/;
to:
proxy_pass https://localhost/;
ran nginx -t and it passed
then sudo service nginx start it started fine.
Intranet site is now up. Gonna test and see if I still have any issues. Thanks for everyones help.