Members of the former Dover School Board, recently ousted by a meager majority of voters in the November election, have formed a private citizens' group in order to further their message. Having been forced to abandon the struggle in the Dover school system, the group has now turned their attentions to the Adamsvil Museum, a popular field trip location. The Museum became a target shortly after Joe, a relatively new resident in the community, unearthed and donated a fossil of the prehistoric human known colloquially as "Peking Man."

Blathers, the Museum's longtime manager and archivist, was reportedly ecstatic with the donation as almost all fossils of this type have been located near Beijing, China. That a Peking Man sample could be found in Adamsvil - and so near to the surface as to be uncovered with a simple garden shovel - was "astonishing," according to Blathers. "Hoo hoo! Adamsvil is fortunate that we have many eras of the fossil record available for our study," he continued. "Why, almost every day the Museum receives fossil donations for our exhibit! It's enough to make one quite giddy!"

Blathers's archival comments on "Peking Man" specifically addressed the connection "between ape and man," as he quaintly put it. "Peking Man" is commonly cited as one of the evolutionary steps that led to human beings as we exist today. Evolution, a scientific theory first investigated by Charles Darwin in the 1800s, suggests that organisms pass on certain traits from generation to generation that affect the overall population and may result in the emergence of new species. Intelligent Design, in contrast, states that organisms are too complex to have developed naturally over time and must have been created by a guiding, intelligent force. This "force" is often understood - but not necessarily named - to be God and critics of the theory say efforts like the Dover School Board's are simply an underhanded way to get religious messages into the classroom.

The Board has long been suspicious of the Adamsvil Museum's scientific bias, as the dinosaur wing plainly and matter-of-factly discusses Earth's age as measured in billions of years... not the 4000 to 8000 years usually quoted by theologians. The Board's spokeperson also pointed out that Blathers gained his fossil-identifying skills through a correspondence course and that he is therefore suspect in his scope and accuracy.

When asked for comment, local businessman Tom Nook expressed his outrage at the Dover School Board's "obvious agenda of narrow-minded, ham-fisted tyranny."

"Not only have they built their platform on the shallow ravings of the 'Left Behind' pop-theology set, and sought to demean a universally accepted and researched theory and by extension science in general, but they also want to cast aside one of our nation's most hallowed traditions: that the state shall raise no religion or philosophy above any other... because in America, all schools of thought are welcome, yes?" Nook said. "Quite frankly, I'm annoyed that these masters of loopholery didn't put their energies towards something blatantly abhorrent, like the Neo Nazi convention that blows through town every so often. Where were these 'guardians of common sense' back when York Mayor Charlie Robertson was getting off scot-free in the Race Riot case? If you're going to attack the Constitution, you might as well pick on something that everybody already hates, like the free speech and assembly of bigots, instead of parading against the sum knowledge of our world's most learned men and women. Talk about the emperor having no clothes!"

Dora, an amateur gardener browsing the Nook-N-Go for new seed packets, added "And in the end, it's not really about making sure kids have equal access to lots of different theories, is it? It's just that the one theory they like - and let's call it creationism because that's what it is, you don't see them out them championing any Hindu theories about the world being balanced on the backs of elephants, do you? - it's that the teaching of evolution just cuts their beliefs right off at the knees. They've probably spent their entire life gritting their teeth because their kids learned one thing on Sunday and then an entirely different thing Monday through Friday! This is just a childish, mean-spirited attempt to change the rules of a game that they aren't even smart enough to play. Squeaky!"

"And besides," Nook continued, "It's not like Blathers couldn't include a religious studies exhibit someday. Just separate from the fossil wing. Although I hear he's pretty strapped for funding since that silly telescope went in, not to mention the coffee bar. And if that's not good enough, there's always, for crying out loud, the six billion private schools all over the state, you see? Where does the Dover School Board get off acting like they're the ones with their backs to the wall? Two thousand years of oppression says otherwise!"

At the moment, however, Blathers has no plans to expand the Adamsvil Museum, and says the actions of the Dover School Board are not of great concern. "We are, ah, woefully underdeveloped at the moment, with a desperate need to complete the exhibits we do have, let alone adding new ones," he stated. "The fault seems to lie in the fact that fishing lures always float south while the fish always float north, and that there is no longer any way to tiptoe and 'hold' the bug net in place high in the air so as to get the drop on an errant insect! Nasty creatures, I say! Wot wot!"