Would you endure an insurmountable amount of pain and suffering if you knew it was the path to true enlightenment?

Maybe you're too young to have experienced this (and maybe not), but you can't even express a lot of things in life mathematically, let alone solve all problems with it. This is why in a lot of cases, science and religion can happily coexist.

Not true. You can't explain things because you don't try. Numbers can explain everything, it's up to humans to discover a way to apply mathematics in a way that allows us to reasonably understand. Religion is for the weak and afraid. There is no life after death. Focus on what matters instead of fairy tales.

Your thinking is too narrow. It's a common problem among scientists - a lot of them try to quantify everything and they lose meaning in doing so. Religion, when used properly (again in my opinion, and juxtaposed with science for this conversation), exists to explain both the inexpiable and things we simply haven't discovered yet. They are two different things, and neither refutes the other.

I have a mathematical problem lets see if you can grasp the concept. I'll start by saying everything tangible that exists is made up of particles. And these particles are measurable into mathematic predictable values. Science uses this understanding exploiting these known constants in various forms such as chemistry and physics. Now consider that even the makeup of the human body is also created from known particles. So is that to say if I could calculate the sum of a persons being and all external variables that your future is predicated. Or will you claim that it is your own free will and say that you're able to bend physics and molecular reactions with your thoughts which arguably are also created by molecular reactions.

Theoretically, the future could be predicted using mathematics, there's just currently not a way to do it. At best, we are limited to making an educated guess.

Stop making me laugh.

Commendable reply I agree there's always a logical answer better to accept a hard truth then live a comfortable fallacy.

I don't think I agree with this, but would you elaborate?

I hate to be a downer, but I don't think there is always a logical answer, either.

It's totally possible that humans could eventually find a method of predicting the future by using mathematics. Obviously, if the smartest people alive can't tell you how that would work, I sure can't either. Basically, you would still have "free will" but your actions can be predicted. Things also might get complicated when you see your future and try to change it. There are a lot of unknowns here, so I can't really elaborate.

I feel that depends on perspective give an example

I'm going to call bullshit as you most likely won't be willing (or able) to provide proof to back that. Please keep your personal life to yourself, as that's not what we're here to discuss.

Well, for one thing, not everything is a deductive problem and not everything can be expressed with binary first order logic. So say you have a problem in which the answer is "maybe". It isn't due to a lack of knowledge but rather simple chance. For instance, will a meteorite kill everything on Earth next year? Maybe. We can go out and find everything in the solar system, calculate its trajectory, and figure out what us on a collision course and still the answer is "maybe".

So, you express it in ternary logic or some other multi valued system. We don't have the math for that. What's commonly misunderstood isn't whether or not we will ever discover the math to solve it, but rather if it's philosophically *possible* to *ever* have the math for that.

So we use another tool - meta-language analysis. That is, we de-quantify the problem into a qualitative system of reasoning because it isn't solvable through mathematical means. This is okay because after all, math is just a philosophical construct.

Well, true that. I just felt like I should provide some context to why I hold the opinions I do.

If you can't prove it, I assume you're lying. That's how the internet works. Not all of us are that stupid.

Point taken. I'm not willing to provide any more specific details due to privacy concerns, so you're right - I shouldn't have posted that.

Agreed math is a construct of understanding. However logic is based on understanding in itself not just mathematics or physics or any exacting science. And thus perspective plays an invaluable role in determining a logical answer most often its a combination of practices. Take a radioactive isotope for example it isn't constant energetically but it's half life generally is. The predictability lies in measuring the rate of loss rather than gain. There are always constants and always variables it's just a matter of seeing them and how they are seen.

One question, since everyone else is gone. I'm just asking for fun...

If what you said is true... how likely is it that the NSA would be able to have some kind of backdoor or intentional weakness in SHA-2? For example, if I used that instead of whirlpool, would it be significantly easier to recover data from my hard drives? I'm extremely paranoid that the US government will kick down my door any day now. I have shit I'm not supposed to have.

I don't think it's terribly likely, although they do hire the majority of mathematicians in the country, so who knows? You can rest easy, though, because even if the NSA does have it, the FBI doesn't, and it would be a serious breach of the law for the NSA to be knocking down your door unless what you have is treasonous.

There's actually not much that differentiates logic from any other kind of math. You could even make a case that logic is more philosophical in nature than algebra or any of the calculi - but not by much.

But, I agree - perspective does play a huge role in how problems get solved.