That's also a perfectly valid way to look at it. I personally think SETI is a fool's errand for a variety of reasons (including the Fermi Paradox) and don't particularly want public funds spent on it, but I'm not going to have a hissy fit if a teacher mentions SETI or their belief in ET intelligence in class, nor do I think SETI isn't science, even though I think it falls into the same category as ID and doesn't fit the narrow definitions proposed by the ID critics here.
Personally, I tend to believe the Drake equasion has so many assumptions that it is of dubious worth. I also think Fermi had a really good point. Because of this, I won't go so far as to say SETI is un-scientific (as it is looking for artifically produced signals made by physical beings such as us who rely on the same physical principles to communicate) but my opinion is that it's highly speculative. We could search the sky more efficiently from outside the atmosphere. Let's concentrate on colonizing the solar system.
Intelligent design is fraught with problems. If the Lord wants the universe to look natural, we're not going to pierce the veil. On the other hand, if the Lord really wants to give us the message, there would be no question in anyone's mind at all. No inferance would be needed. The middle positions seem to be that either the universe is designed to fool us, or the Lord has hidden "Easter eggs" deep within the natural world for us to discover, such as the words "Don't Panic" encoded within every human's DNA or the score for the 1812 Overture within the digits to Pi. I reject both of these middle positions as not making much sense to me, unless we're talking about the Norse god of trickery, Loki.
I appreciate the desire people have to find foensic evidence in the Lord's existence. However, I think that attempting to prove the Lords existence would seem to be a rejection of faith. Doing so, in my opinion, does a mis-service to both science and faith.