In his Regensburg Address, the Pontiff voices an interesting opinion on the state of reason today. Essentially, he believes that modern reason and particularly the sort of reasoning as practiced in science, tends to be much too narrow in its scope. Therefore, it (reasoning) is self-limiting beyond what he (Pope Benedict XVI) thinks it should be. The Pope describes modern reason as "This modern concept of reason is based, to put it briefly, on a synthesis between Platonism (Cartesianism) and empiricism, a synthesis confirmed by the success of technology."
. The Platonic/Cartesian element being the realization of how well mathematical principles can, and do, model reality. The "empiricism" is the view that only "falsification" and "experimentation" can provide you proof of what is "real".
The Pope further defines two points about what can be drawn as true from the sort of modern reason practiced today. The two points are as follows:
First, only the kind of certainty resulting from the interplay of mathematical and empirical elements can be considered scientific. Anything that would claim to be science must be measured against this criterion. Hence the human sciences, such as history, psychology, sociology and philosophy, attempt to conform themselves to this canon of scientificity.
A second point, which is important for our reflections, is that by its very nature this method excludes the question of God, making it appear an unscientific or pre-scientific question.
"...as I have attempted to show, modern scientific reason with its intrinsically Platonic element bears within itself a question which points beyond itself and beyond the possibilities of its methodology."I believe, in saying that the modern reasoning, because of its adopted methodology, is essentially unable to answer the question of its own existence.