| William A. Williams | |
| Birth Name: | William Asbury Williams |
| Birth Date: | 30 May 1854 |
| Birth Place: | Beallsville, Ohio, U.S. |
| Death Place: | Camden, New Jersey, U.S. |
| Occupation: | Clergyman, writer |
| Children: | 3 |
William Asbury Williams D.D. (May 30, 1854 – May 6, 1938) was an American Presbyterian clergyman and creationist writer.
Williams was born in Beallsville, Ohio.[1] He was the son of Elam Williams and Elizabeth Sarah McKitrick.[2] He graduated from Franklin College in 1876 and Western Theological Seminary in 1880.[1] He obtained his A. M. in 1879 and a Doctor of Divinity degree from Scio College in 1888.[3]
In 1885, he was ordained into the Presbyterian ministry. He was Professor of Greek and Hebrew at Franklin College (1880–1887) and served as President (1887–1901).[3] He was a pastor at Powhatan Point, Ohio (1885–1896), Moundsville, West Virginia (1896–1901) and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1908).[4]
From 1908 he resided in Philadelphia and after 1920 in Camden.[1] Williams married Mary Elizabeth Lanning in 1877, they had three children.[2] His son Frank Harry Mead Williams (1896–1972) was a math professor at Drexel University.[2] [5]
Williams was a Christian young earth creationist who claimed to have mathematically disproven evolution.[6] [7] In 1925, Williams authored The Evolution of Man Scientifically Disproved: In 50 Arguments. It was revised and republished in an edition of 20, 000 copies in 1928.[8] The book was dismissed by mathematicians as a fundamentalist tract.[9] [7] Williams relied heavily on the Bible for his arguments.[10]
Williams' book gave the first presentation of the creationist probability argument against evolution which influenced the pseudoscientific creation science movement.[6] [11] Glenn Branch deputy director of the National Center for Science Education has described Williams' arguments against evolution as "pseudomathematics".[12]