Who died and made you the Setter of What Can Be Debated In An Open Society?
The rules for a debate would be set by those engaging in the debate. Why is this such a controversial idea to you--there are debates about ethics, morality, science vs. religion all the time. No one's forcing you to accept the groundrules for any debate, and there are plenty of religious believers who would agree to a science-based debate, and scientists who would agree to any variation of groundrules simply to take on believers in ID.
You claim a completely false authority to set debate rules. There's no sillier concept when the debate is between believers due to scientific evidence and believers due to religious FAITH.
Why is this so hard for you to understand?
What difference does it make
In science, a debate has to be about the evidence, and to use the scientific method.
Other debates use other methods and rules.
It is useless for a scientist to debate creationists who just wave away any facts they find inconvenient.
The age of the earth is a good example. Science favors about 4.5 billion years based on several lines of evidence. Young earth creationists, with no good scientific backing, often play silly games with the decay rates to try to argue against this. When their arguments are finally beaten down, they turn to something else equally ridiculous. But because their arguments really stem from religious belief, rather than scientific data, they cannot accept the findings of science. Why should scientists waste time arguing with them?