Here is a New York Times story about a new book by the National Academy of Sciences. You can read the book online. In fact, you can download the entire book in PDF format, as I just did. Here is the definition of “science,” from the book:

The use of evidence to construct testable explanations and predictions of natural phenomena, as well as the knowledge generated through this process.

This definition does not exclude Design Theory, which is an attempt to use the methods of science to establish the existence of God. According to Richard Swinburne, “theism [the view that there is a God] provides by far the simplest explanation of all phenomena” (Is There a God? [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996], 41). Here is Swinburne’s summary of his book:

The basic structure of my argument is this. Scientists, historians, and detectives observe data and proceed thence to some theory about what best explains the occurrence of these data. We can analyse the criteria which they use in reaching a conclusion that a certain theory is better supported by the data than a different theory—that is, is more likely, on the basis of those data, to be true. Using those same criteria, we find that the view that there is a God explains everything we observe, not just some narrow range of data. It explains the fact that there is a universe at all, that scientific laws operate within it, that it contains conscious animals and humans with very complex intricately organized bodies, that we have abundant opportunities for developing ourselves and the world, as well as the more particular data that humans report miracles and have religious experiences. In so far as scientific causes and laws explain some of these things (and in part they do), these very causes and laws need explaining, and God’s action explains them. The very same criteria which scientists use to reach their own theories lead us to move beyond those theories to a creator God who sustains everything in existence. (Page 2; italics in original)

Swinburne’s claim is that science, properly understood and conducted, leads to theism. If the authors of the NAS book meant to exclude Design Theory from their definition of “science,” they needed to stipulate that scientific explanations must make no reference to supernatural entities such as God. But this appears ad hoc. Why should science limit itself to naturalistic explanations of natural phenomena?