No, it CAN be a religious tenent, but again, as I have explained in some detail, it does not need to be. ID is a concept, a theory if you prefer, that the complexity, symmetry, order of the universe and the things that are in it did not happen by pure happenstance or just randomly lucked out to be the way they are. It is a concept that there is an intelligence behind it, something that is ordering it or causing it to be the way it is. It is the same kind of phenomenon in what we can evidence in our own sometimes unexplainable reasoning processes or instinct that occurs outside of experience or appreciation for beauty or anything else that cannot be explained scientifically.
Such things exist though science cannot explain why. It is not a religious notion then to think that such intelligence could extend beyond that which we have experienced and is a force within it all. It does not require belief in a diety or any supernatural being. It only has to assume that everything hasn't happened by pure chance.
And that is absolutely a concept that should be part of the full education of every student. Had it been part of yours, explained in that way, you might not be doggedly insisting that ID is religion and couldn't be anything else. That is becoming repetitiously tedious as I am sure my attempts to explain it as I see it has no doubt become repetitiously tedious to others.
Here is our problem. The thing is, ID requires that there be an Intelligence that directs or guides the creation of life. That intelligence IS what forces this into the religious category as that requires it to be OUTSIDE of natural laws. Natural laws are not intelligence and that intelligence cannot be construed to be natural. That makes the intelligence SUPERNATURAL i.e. religious. I challenge you to come up with a scenario other than the ET one I have covered where that intelligence is not religious in nature. You will not be able to. It does not have to be a deity by the way as there are many religions that do not believe in a deity but they all believe in a supernatural element and that is what is behind the intelligence in ID.
Not at all. As Einstein, as did Spinoza before him, for instance, concluded, the intelligence itself is part of the natural order. He did not see it as supernatural, but as a part of the whole. Just as you have to have certain elements in order for certain things to happen whether we are speaking of suns or planets or comets or whatever, one of those elements is the intelligence that results in the otherwise unexplainable order that exists in the universe.