(RNS6-FEB12) A billboard that reads “Praise Darwin” sits just outside Dover, Pa., the town that was embroiled in a fight over evolution and intelligent design in 2005. For use with RNS-DARWIN-DOVER, transmitted Feb. 12, 2009. Religion News Service photo by Chris Knight/The Patriot-News.

DOVER, Pa. — A mile or so north of this quiet borough in south-central Pennsylvania, a small billboard bears the slogan “Praise Darwin.”

The billboard was erected by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, based in Madison, Wis., to celebrate the 200th birthday of the father of evolution theory, Charles Darwin.

Dover, one of three towns nationwide to get the “Praise Darwin” billboard, made international news in 2004 when the local school board decided that children should be taught an alternative to Darwin’s theory of evolution in biology class. The board became the first in the nation to decide that “intelligent design” should be part of the science curriculum.

Intelligent Design holds that living things are too complicated to have appeared by chance, and therefore must have been designed by a higher power. A group of parents sued, and in December 2005, a federal court judge ruled that intelligent design was a “mere re-labeling of creationism” and barred the district from teaching about it in science class.

William Buckingham, a former Dover School Board member who pushed the teaching of intelligent design, remains angry about the ruling. But he said, “The billboard doesn’t bother me.”

“That’s a matter of free speech,” Buckingham said. “It would be nice if free speech applied to Christians, too. This wasn’t a trial; it was a fix. We didn’t lose it. It was taken from us. And that judge is still a jackass.”

U.S. Middle District Judge John E. Jones III, who made the landmark Dover ruling, said the public often misses the point of the case.

In his ruling, Jones said it was “abundantly clear” that the school district policy was religiously motivated and violated the establishment clause in the U.S. Constitution, which bars the government from endorsing any religion.

The case drew journalists from around the world. In 2006, Time magazine named Jones one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

“I imagine with this case I have written the first line of my own obituary,” Jones said. “But I’m comfortable knowing this may be what I’m remembered for.”

Tammy Kitzmiller, the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, said she likes the billboard, “but I was a little worried that it would be seen as anti-religious, as opposed to being pro-science.”

Each year around Dec. 20, the anniversary of Jones’ decision, the plaintiffs get together socially.

“We call it `Kitzmas,”‘ Kitzmiller said. “I look back, and it’s hard to believe that all went on.”

A man using a chain saw to trim a tree about 50 yards north of the sign declined to give his name, but he said he was a member of the family that owns the ground on which the billboard stands. He said the family wants it removed.

“We’re against that Darwin stuff. We’re going to try to get it taken down,” he said.

The billboards also were placed in Dayton, Tenn., the site of the famous 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial that pitted evolution against creation, and in Grand Junction, Colo., where the Freedom from Religion Foundation has complained about prayers in public meetings.

Darwin, a quiet and studious man who studied to be an Anglican clergyman before bending his intellect toward natural history, might well be disturbed that his thoughts and writings still create a stir.

Scientists say that there is no more reason for debate.

“Evolution is not a theory. It’s a fact,” said John H. Henson, a biology professor at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa. “Nothing in biology makes sense other than in the light of evolution.”

(T.W. Burger writes for the Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pa.)