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The '''United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court''' (or '''FISC''') is a [[United States federal courts|U.S. federal court]] authorized under {{UnitedStatesCode|50|1803}} and established by the [[Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act]] of [[1978]] (known as FISA for short). Its jurisdiction is to oversee requests for surveillance warrants by federal police agencies (primarily the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|F.B.I.]]) against suspected foreign [[secret agent|intelligence agents]] inside the United States.
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Each application for one of these surveillance warrant (called a FISA warrant) is made before an individual judge of the court. Like a [[grand jury]], FISC is not an [[Adversary system|adversarial court]]: the federal government is the only party to its proceedings. However, the court may allow third parties to submit briefs as ''[[amicus curiae|amici curiae]]''. If an application is denied by one judge of the FISC, the federal government is not allowed to make the same application to a different judge of the FISC. Instead, denials must be appealed to the [[United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review]]. Such appeals are rare: the first appeal from the FISC to the Court of Review was made in [[2002]], 24 years after the founding of the FISC.
'''Methodological naturalism''' ('''MN''') states that certain [[methodology|methods]] of inquiry, investigation, and gaining [[knowledge]] can and do use only [[nature|natural]], [[physics|physical]], and [[scientific materialism|material]] approaches and explanations, and are not influenced by [[supernatural]] phenomena. The methodology of [[research]] in [[natural science]]s - called the [[scientific method]] - is commonly thought to be naturalistic.
Because of the sensitive nature of its business, the FISC is a "secret court": its hearings are closed to the public, and, while records of the proceedings are kept, those records are also not available to the public. (Copies of those records with [[classified]] information redacted out can and have been made public.) Due to the classified nature of its proceedings, only government attorneys are usually permitted to appear before the FISC.
==Difference from ontological naturalism==
When the court was founded, it was composed of seven [[United States district court|federal district]] judges appointed by the [[Chief Justice of the United States]], each serving a seven year term, with one judge being appointed each year. In [[2001]], the [[USA PATRIOT Act]] expanded the court to eleven judges, and required that at least three of the judges of the court be from within twenty miles of the [[District of Columbia]]. No judge may be appointed to this court more than once, and no judge may be appointed to both the Court of Review and the FISC.
[[Methodology]], being distinct from [[ontology]], relates to the accepted procedures by which [[naturalism (philosophy)|naturalism]] is applied. The procedure for [[scientific method|scientific investigation]] is one such methodology. Such application does not address the ontological question of the existence or nonexistence of the supernatural. Ontological naturalism, in contrast, makes a [[metaphysics|metaphysical]] assumption that the natural world is all that exists. [[Atheism]] relies on the justifications for ontological naturalism.
[[Category:Judicial Branch of the United States Government]]
==Creationist criticism==
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Supporters of [[creation science]] believe that there is an implied connection between the methodological naturalism employed by the scientific method and ontological naturalism. The [[Institute for Creation Research]] states that methodological naturalism "could just as well be called atheism, and is really a religion to be accepted on faith." [http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=565] It is however generally accepted among mainstream scientists that scientific investigation does not require an ontological assumption with regards to the supernatural. In the words of [[Richard Dawkins]], biologist and professor of public understanding of science at [[Oxford University]], "Science does not produce evidence against God, Science and religion ask different questions." [http://www.time.com/time/archive/preview/0,10987,1090909,00.html]<!--Time Magazine, 15 August 2005, page 32-->
Because methodological naturalism is limited to strictly natural causes, [[creationists]] and [[Intelligent Design]] supporters claim it "cannot be justified as a normative principle for all types of science--without doing violence to science as a truth-seeking enterprise"
[http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=94]. These critics argue that science should not limit itself to strictly natural causes in its investigations. Supporters have defended methodological naturalism as a program, describing it as an "effective, powerful"[http://www.freeinquiry.com/naturalism.html] way for "promoting successful investigation"[http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/nontheism/naturalism/index.html] and "an essential aspect of ... the study of the natural universe"[http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/MethodologicalNaturalism.htm]. The [[history of science]] is sometimes described as "a progression from supernaturalism to naturalism."[http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/mark_vuletic/ntse.html] Supporters consider the alternatives as presented by creationists and Intelligent Design supporters to be "positively ineffective and counter-productive, ... in attempts to understand the natural world"[http://www.freeinquiry.com/naturalism.html]
==History==
The term "methodological naturalism" itself probably does not originate much earlier than the 1980s; [[Phillip E. Johnson]] acknowledges taking it (or "methodological atheism") from Nancey Murphy, a theologian with training in the [[philosophy of science]]. Arguably, MN itself dates to the Ionian pre-Socratic philosophers of the [[4th century BCE]]; see, e.g., [[Jonathan Barnes]]'s introduction to Early Greek Philosophy (Penguin), which describes them as subscribing to principles of empirical investigation that strikingly anticipate MN. [[Benjamin Wiker]] traces the historical development of the modern materialist perspective starting with the choice of the Epicureans to focus exclusively on the natural realm as a necessary step toward their goals; see his book "Moral Darwinism; How We Became Hedonists".
==External links==
* [http://www.creationismstrojanhorse.com/ForrestPhilo.pdf Methodological Naturalism and Philosophical Naturalism: Clarifying the Connection] (PDF)
==See also==
* [[Materialism]]
* [[Naturalism (philosophy)]]
* [[Observation]]
* [[Philosophy of science]]
* [[Pragmatism]]
* [[Supernatural]]
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