Is Nidhal Guessoum Dishonest or Ignorant?

For one thing, he claims that those considering the Earth was created 6000 years ago are a small minority.

And even the small minority in the West that believes the world to be only 6,000 years old based on a literalist reading of the Bible has negligible presence in the media or on campuses.

From: Lessons learned from the ‘Earth does not rotate’ debacle
Published: 17:06 February 23, 2015 10
By Nidhal Guessoum | Special to Gulf News
https://gulfnews.com/opinion/thinkers/lessons-learned-from-the-earth-does-not-rotate-debacle-1.1461385

The same article in Arabic (I presume the article is the same, I don't read Arabic), is available on his site.

So, Nidhal Guessoum says, if you believe Earth was crezated 6000 years ago, you are in a small minority in the West.

For another thing, if you want statistics on opinions in the US, you go to Pew Research Center, where I searched the key word young earth creationism.

And I found an article which says this:

Which do you think is more likely to actually be the explanation for the origin of human life in Earth: the theory of evolution as outlined by Darwin and other scientists, the Biblical account of creation as told in the Bible, or are both true?
Source: Fox New August 25-29, 1999 (Based in registered voters)

Darwinian evolution

15

Both

26

Biblical creation

50

DK

9

From Reading the Polls on Evolution and Creationism
September 28, 2005
http://www.people-press.org/2005/09/28/reading-the-polls-on-evolution-and-creationism/

So, Nidhal Guessoum says, 2015, "the small minority". Pewsearch said for 1999 of registered voters in US, 50 %. Of course, this is compatible if US is a very small country like Slovenia, but this is obviously not the case.

I would say, Nidhal Guessoum is more likely to have been ignorant in this context. In Scientific academies, and Nidhal is Astrophysicist, you learn a lot of things, both true and false about the material world. You learn mostly false things about history of sciences, how past paradigms functioned and what they were, and therefore it is not impossible you also learn mostly false things and from bad sources like banter and humour and sarcasm in informal conversations, how the sociaology of "science" and science criticism functions.

In fact, the grand old man of Archaeology, Colin Renfrew (a very good resource if you know how to sift away his uniformitarian bias and reread the uniformitarian dates), also said that previous to the modern paradigm, without doubt only a small part took Ussher's Biblical chronology seriously.* Er, no. Ussher and Syncellus were main contenders for Biblical chronology and, outside freemasonry, few took philosophical scepticism of that too seriously, at least up to Siccar point and Cuvier. Two Protestants, by the way, both James Hutton, buried in Greyfriars Kirkyard, and Georges Cuvier, part of the Protestant "church" committee under Napoleon.

Perhaps the ignorance is so widespread because it is part of a semi-conscious effort (I don't believe in unconscious efforts**) to belittle the opponent of a debate one does not want to recognise as one such.

Or - another possibility - perhaps it is not altogether honest.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St. Placidus and Companions, Martyrs***
5.X.2018

* In the French translation, which I cite in an article of mine, the actual text is:

Même si très peu de gens sans doute avaient pris au sérieux la date 4004 av. J.-C. calculée à partir de l'Ancien Testament comme point de départ de la création, il y en avait probablement aussi peu pour croire que le passé de l'humanité antérieur aux écrits des Grecs et des Romains et aux récits de la Bible présentait un quelconque intérêt. (P. 27).

Page reference referring to French translation of Prehistory: The Making Of The Human Mind.

** At least not outside the realm of bodily exertion. It does happen one becomes conscious of having already made efforts to keep warm in cold weather or feel at ease in warm clothes when it is already warm.

*** Messanae, in Sicilia, natalis sanctorum Martyrum Placidi Monachi, e beati Benedicti Abbatis discipulis, et ejus fratrum Eutychii et Victorini, ac sororis eorum Flaviae Virginis, itemque Donati, Firmati Diaconi, Fausti et aliorum triginta Monachorum, qui omnes a Manucha pirata, pro Christi fide, necati sunt.