There's a sign the author of the statement is an utter and complete moron.
If Evolution was an explanation of the origin of life, Darwin wouldn't have entitled his book "The Origin of Species"; he would have called it "The Origin of Life."
It's just sloppy use of language. It happens. There's no need to be rude.
"There's a sign the author of the statement is an utter and complete moron."
Or completely uneducated about evolution, a trait common amongst Creationists, er, IDers.
There's a sign the author of the statement is an utter and complete moron.
If Evolution was an explanation of the origin of life, Darwin wouldn't have entitled his book "The Origin of Species"; he would have called it "The Origin of Life."
You're right that on this count the statement is flat wrong, but on another it is misleading, and I think, in the way that the ID movement sells itself, intentionally so. If we correct "origin of life" to "history of life," the manner in which, and the extent to which, ID "differs from Darwin’s view" is all but arbitrary.
What I mean is that there are some proponents or supporters of ID who are basically strict creationists, holding that each "kind" (whatever that is) of creature had an entirely separate and non-natural origin. On the other hand there are IDers who have little to no problem with macro-evolution, in some cases possibly up to and including the common origin of man and ape, and reserve the mechanism of ID (whatever that is) to explain the origin of certain complex molecular components or subsystems of living things.
Acknowledging this is a problem for ID for several reasons.
For one it would undermine an important function of the ID movement, which is to serve as a sort of "lowest common denominator" umbrella ideology for anti-evolutionists, who have historically been prone to intense infighting (typically of a political or irresolvable nature, unlike the adversarial process in mainstream science which has the effect of resolving debates).
The substantive differences between, say, strict creationism and progressive creationism, or between young earth and old earth creationism, are nearly as great and as irresolvable as those between any version of creationism and mainstream scientific accounts, and in some cases greater. The ID brand name allows anti-evolutionists to avoid (literally to ignore) such differences and work together.
In general such willingness to set aside differences and band together is a good thing, but this is not the case if one claims to represent a scientific view or movement. Science seeks to expose, clarify and sharply delineate substantive differences, especially if they are mutually irreconcilable. Science is opposed at its core to wishy-washy relativism. If two incommensurable views exist within a scientific field or theory, it is an intellectual obligation to set them openly at odds with the aim of discovering crucial tests to decide between them.
Another problem with acknowledging the arbitrary degree to which ID differs with evolutionary views is that this pretty much gives away the fundamentally vacuous character of "intelligent design," or at best reveals that it is nothing like a comparable "alternative" to evolutionary theory. One of the most important features of any scientific theory is a mechanism or mechanisms. The whole point of ID, however, is to not have a mechanism.
If IDers don't agree about what was "intelligently designed" (whether for instance whole organisms or only some of the more complex molecular machines of which they are composed) at least that is potentially resolvable, if IDers were at some point willing to expose and debate their differences. OTOH avoidance of the issue of how (or when, or where, or why) acts of "intelligent design" occur is key to the very nature of intelligent design, both in how it is pursued and how it is presented.
Basically ID wants to assert that something happened, but refuses to answer or address any further questions, even (if not especially) exactly what that "something" was. This is not under any circumstances an acceptable approach in science, certainly not for any theory that wishes to claim status as an "alternative" to well established theory. Science demands that any and all aspects of a theory are subject to investigation.