So you think that something like feline animalism is an assertion? I don't think I'm making myself clear at all then / Your page says you have a BA in Philosophy - are you familiar with much philosophy of language? Perhaps you'll like seeing a more formal argument:
 Assertions are statements: things that can be true or false (cf "is it raining?", which is a question not a statement)
 A common, sensible, and relevant use of ID is "we came about through intelligent design, not evolution"
 That makes no sense if ID is a statement, so ID can't be a statement (cf "we came about through one phenomenon, not the other")
 If ID isn't a statement, then it can't be an assertion (QED)
Where do I go wrong? ((Compare ID to lamps, Marxism, and Goldbach's conjecture: "I assert [that] lamps" makes no sense, because "lamps" can't be true or false. "Marxism" also can't be true or false. But "every even integer greater than 2 can be written as the sum of two primes" can be. The reason the lead sounds right is because that is the thing that supporters of ID often assert.)) T