Here's what I don't get...Why does evolution theory get to "start" after life has already begun by making the pronouncement that "the origin of life is not relevant to the ToE"?...while I.D. isn't allowed to say "the identity of the designer isn't relevant"?
Whether or not you constrain science to the philosophy of materialism - the concept of design is certainly a candidate for investigation from a forensic approach.
ID purports to explain how intelligent life got here, namely that it was designed by an intelligent being. This is begging the question, however. You cannot explain intelligence by invoking a being possessing the property you are trying to explain. That's the logical fallacy of ID. Evolution can explain intelligence without such problems, since no intelligence is postulated in the first place. An analogous problem for evolution would be to explain biodiversity by stating that there were many different types of organisms in existence when life began and each evolved independently into a type of organism seen today. That would be invoking biodiversity to explain biodiversity, similarly to what ID does.