ID is Creationism in a Cheap TuxedoWhy do they say this? To try to discredit it. They believe that creationism has no intellectual credibility. This is why people, like some atheists here, parrot a professor at University of Kansas named Krishtalka.
ID is often confused with Creation Science (not an oxymoron), but they are indeed quite different. Rather then beginning with some particular interpretation of Genesis (as young-earth and old-earth creationists typically do), ID begins with investigating the natural world. ID looks for patterns in nature that are best explained as the product of intelligence. Given what the world reveals about itself, ID proponents reason that a designing intelligence best explains certain patterns in nature. This is not to be confused with my own view of Biblical Creationism.
The great difference between ID and Creation Science, then, is that ID relies not on prior assumptions about divine activity in the world, but on methods developed within the scientific population for recognizing intelligence. Even Judge Jones in the Kitzmiller v Dover trial recognized that ID proponents do not base their theory on "the Book of Genesis," "a young earth," or "a catastrophic Noachic flood."
