Do you believe in god or math?

[Modular Moog V]

Had a conversation eerily similar to this a bit ago. Long story short. The symbols we use, the words themselves are (as far as we know) uniquely human. As has been said, a beaver may measure distance with its tail. But if a beavers tail is 12 inches long, and we measure out a distance of two feet, the beaver will measure out two beavers tails. We will use a different "language" to describe the same observation. Numbers, shapes, angles, distance etc are all observations of the world around us placed within a standard frame of reference to make it easy to communicate with one another with regards to the observation. As such, they do not require "belief". They are something that we observe, and something for which almost any of us is prepared to demonstrate with nothing more than a pocketful of change.

To use a particularly illustrative example. Does a circle have 360 degrees? Yes, if one uses our system as a standard it does. But why? Well, you can thank the babylonians who used a sexigecimal system, which is great if you don't have access to a calculator. Laying that aside, a circle could have 4 degrees, but it would be hard to land a shell on target at great distance with only 4 degrees to measure by. Similarly, over great distances, you'll rarely see a whole number employed for a degree. 66.7, or 33.33432 would be more common. This allows for more accuracy. One could say that a circle has more than 360 degrees, but that's not how our system is set up. Point is, that these abstractions that we call numbers (in this case degrees) cannot be shown to exist in and of themselves, it is the things that they describe that most certainly do.

(one of the great things about numbers, is that as a language, they are not subjective in the way that others are)

I agree with everything untill you say math is not subjective like other language. All language is subjective, and math is no exception.

This IS an appeal to authority, but perhaps you can argue it out with Einstein

Here is his take:

As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
Albert Einstein