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On one side, evolution reigns supreme.
On the other, creationism rules.
Talk to some Christians and they'll be quick to tell you the First Amendment having to do with free speech applies to everyone but them. No one wants to hear what they have to say.
Talk to atheists and agnostics and they'll tell you free speech doesn't apply to them, either, because every time they try to explain their position, they get shouted down by overly zealous Christians.
To hear people on both sides talk, it's a losing proposition.
Neither side believes they're being taken seriously.
They forget that free speech permits them to speak freely, but doesn't guarantee that anyone will listen to what they have to say.
So it doesn't take much for one side to agitate the other. They can't help themselves. Gotta keep their message out there. As often and as much as they can. Don't want anyone to think there's only one side to the issue.
Which is, no doubt, the motivation behind the "Praise Darwin" billboard that recently appeared along Carlisle Road, north of Dover.
It is the atheists and agnostics -- in this case the Freedom From Religion Foundation -- stretching its free-speech wings. "Praise Darwin," they say. "Evolve Beyond Belief" they suggest on a billboard intentionally designed to look like a stained-glass window.
It's a plug for evolution.
And it's a slap in the face to a Dover community, particularly that group of Christians in the school district that supported the inclusion of intelligent design -- the theory that suggests animals and plants are so complex they must have been created by a higher being -- in the biology curriculum in 2004.
But that case -- Kitzmiller v. Dover Area school board -- was settled more than three years ago. The Christians begrudgingly accepted their loss, a butt-kicking in the form of a scathing 139-page federal court ruling that went so far as to accuse some members of the former school board of lying under oath. But they've been mostly quiet since. They've licked their wounds and moved on.
If only the winners had done the same.
I must tell you, there is nothing so obnoxious as a gloating winner.
And that's precisely what the Freedom From Religion Foundation is in this instance. They can't let well enough alone. They made their point -- separation of church and state applies to public schools, too. But apparently that's not enough.
Now they want to rub it in a little bit more. Clearly that is their intent or they would not have focused their billboard campaign on two communities -- Dover and Dayton, Tenn., site of the 1925 Scopes monkey trial, the locations of the two most prominent Christianity-versus-evolution events in the last 100 years.
Anything to keep the controversy raging, I guess.
Except that the Christian community in Dover has not been pressing the issue. They haven't changed their minds about creationism and evolution, I'm certain of that, but they've been going about their business in a way that suggests they've decided to agree to disagree without being disagreeable.
Which is more than I can say about the atheists and agnostics in this instance.
They're clearly not satisfied to have won the battle in court; now they want to rub salt in the wounds of people who have every right to believe what they want about evolution and creationism as long as they're not trying to force it down the throats of other people, especially in a public school setting.
Yes, free speech is free speech. And this billboard is an example of the Freedom From Religion Foundation taking advantage of its free speech rights. It's not illegal.
But it is obnoxious. And it's rude.
It has everything to do with respect, or lack of it, for those who believe differently from you.
Isn't that what the non-believers were accusing Dover Christians of five years ago? A lack of respect for their point of view.
I'm pretty sure it was.
And shouldn't that work both ways?
Columns by Larry A. Hicks, Dispatch columnist, run Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. E-mail: lhicks@yorkdispatch.com.
