Thanks for the reasoned response, Tired. Not always the case on these threads.
The problem is just as you have stated it. If it is beyond our knowing, and we can't prove or disprove it, don't you think this takes it out of the realm of science?
Let's try a thought exercise. The entire universe was created with all of its past intact: fossils, light streaming from distant galaxies, as well as your memories of high school and last month's TV shows.
So how do you know when the universe was created? Last Thursday? A week ago Thursday, at 9:00 AM (EST of course)?
What evidence will you be able to bring to discussion of this question?
The problem you have is that you can only work with (1) your belief (perhaps 4004 B.C., October 23rd at 9:00 AM), or (2) facts and theories. You can choose one or the other.
You see the problem? If you go with belief, then whose belief? I post many great Native American creation stories, which you probably do believe. But I know people who do believe them. But CS and ID are not about that. They are about the bible and its creation story. But there is a lot of argument about exactly how that transpired--young earth or old earth, etc. So even within the creation realm there is no unaninimity.
On the other hand, if you go with science there are simply no data available to address this question!
Faith deals with belief and certainty, while science deals with facts and theories. Facts are added all the time, and they are sneaky, stubborn little guys; a stubborn fact has ruined many a good theory. Hence theories evolve through time to fit the facts. But at least there is data there, with the expectation of more data in the future. And there are theories (explanations), with the expectation of better theories in the future. Science is a process, not an absolute, and the results are explanations (theories) not "proof."
Those seem to be the choices. Belief and certainty vs. facts and theories, with no common data to share between the two. As such, it would be nice if the two could be kept separate as they are really different worlds (or as I was advised earlier today, different world views).
So from my viewpoint, your belief does not constitute scientific data or theory. I don't doubt that you feel the same way about science and its methods and results.
Lets keep the two in their own domains, eh?
Well, yes, but your long discussion of "faith and belief" as opposed to science, is not particularly thorough, as you don't address the question of how to deal with design if it actually does occur in nature. Could science properly explain a "designed" phenomenon? If not, wouldn't the problem lie with the science, and not the hypothesis?
To motivate the discussion, suppose an airplane just flew over your house. How would science explain this phenomenon? Would a scientist attempt to explain the existence of the airplane by proposing some sequence of naturalistic processes, or would he simply cut to the chase and say, "it was designed and built by the nice people at Boeing?"
The scientist would of course immediately settle on the latter explanation. The question is: did the scientist make a valid scientific judgement? The answer could be yes or no, depending on what limits you draw around that term "scientific."
Aside from that, the example shows that it's not intrinsically impossible to recognize "design," though it may be more or less easy to do so in different disciplines.
In the case of biological life, we know that it's possible for intelligent agents (i.e., humans) to affect the development of life in various ways, so we cannot automatically rule out the efficacy of a more general design hypothesis. The question is whether there's a way to "know design when we see it," similar to how the scientist recognized that the airplane was a "designed object."
One of the standard complaints about ID is that it's "not testable." Conversely, we might also suggest a test of the ability of scientific processes to detect design in cases where we know for a fact that design is a factor -- for example, genetically engineered, insulin-producing bacteria.
As I noted to edsheppa above, if science is unable to detect design in cases where we know it's there, then there's a problem with the science. One thing is certain: if science a priori excludes a design hypothesis in a case like this, science will get the wrong answer, due to a serious mistake in defining the problem. In this scenario, a science that can't get the right answer in cases where we know the right answer, has no business making derogatory claims about the very thing on which it fails.
On the other hand, if science is able to detect design, then we know that the "not testable" claim is wrong as a general principle, and again "science" has no business making sweeping claims of "non-testability."
In either case, it is simply an established fact that "design" is a valid hypothesis, because we humans practice design on a daily basis. (Verification of the hypothesis in any given case is, of course, another matter entirely). As such, it would appear that the insistence that an Intelligent Design hypothesis is "unscientific" is completely untenable.