Seth, if you don't understand what you're talking about at all, then it's better to keep quiet and not form an opinion.

Math, or more precisely, pure math, is the investigation of patterns and relationships. Math isn't only about numbers, it's about abstract patterns in general. However, math has unsurprisingly many applications in our world, because our world appears to behave approximately logically.

One such application is the theorem for the relationship between the mass and energy of a particle with mass. Every particle with mass has rest energy even if it's not moving, and that rest energy is given by that simple equation right there. That equation is derived from more fundamental principles, which is why it's c^2 in the first place. But most importantly, that equation works, which means it correctly predicts the relationships.

Also, the relationship as written is mathematical in its nature because energy and mass are measurable, and hence we may assign numbers to them. However, note that we may be able to divorce all measurements from this statement and the relationship should stay the same.

Finally, you can attempt to describe a physical, economical, or social situation with a mathematical description, but unless it works and it predicts future similar situations, then your relationship is useless.

Okay, but doesn't dark matter possibly prove some of Einstein's laws/theories wrong?  He was genius but to believe everything that he put out as fact would be a mistake especially given the limited resources he had compared to today.   There are many things in this universe that still can't be explained by a simple or complex math equation.

Although dark matter is the most popular theory to explain the various astronomical observations of galaxies and galaxy clusters, there has been no direct observational evidence of dark matter. Some alternative theories have been proposed to explain these observations without the need for a vast amount of undetected matter. They broadly fall into the categories of modified gravity laws and quantum gravity laws. The difference between modified gravity laws and quantum gravity laws is that modified gravity laws simply propose alternative behaviour of gravity at astrophysical and cosmological scales, without any regard to the quantum scale. Both posit that gravity behaves differently at different scales of the universe, making the laws established by Newton and Einstein insufficient.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter

@seth: You know, science is trying to perfect itself all the time. There's work happening even now to solve problems like that, and until we can come up with something more accurate, we can only use whatever we have - and most of it is correct for our applications, and whatever isn't, doesn't get used.

or until we build a quantum computer.

I apologize for not being precise enough, but I thought I needed to shorten my argument so that it could be read and understood in a relatively short period of time (i.e. didn't want you to go all TL;DR). When I said that Einstein's description worked, I meant under the reasonable spectrum that it is meant to work for. It does appear that Einstein's relativity may be incomplete in a larger sense. That still has nothing to do with what I said about math and science.

2nd try short version:

e=mc^2 is not really math but physics. Its just a description of a fundamental relation in nature:

Energy is mass x lightspeed squared. 

And thats what you can do with it:

You want to know how much power 1kg bacon has ? Here you go

m =1 kg

c= 300000000 m/s (lightspeed)^2= 90000000000000000

1kg x 90000000000000000 = 90000000000000000 Joule.

Thats about 21 Megatons if you could fire all the energy of 1kg bacon at once it would be like if you fired about 1400 Hiroshima Bombs at once. (its all just a rounded calculation because c is not exactly 300000000 m/s)

Math is just a language a tool that is all. Its just better qualified to describe the world then our usual language.

Why is it mc^2 and not mc^3: 

How do you know that 1kg apples is 1kg and not 2kg ? You put it on a scale. But back then Einstein couldnt measure it so he took a close look at the world and because he was a genius he figured it all out with logical deduction/ intuition and math.

Time is a physical dimension: You need length width and depth to find something in a static 3D room.  But our universe is not static everything moves constantly you can not not move. So you need a 4th dimension to pinpoint the location of an object. And thats time. We are 4 dimensional beings moving along a 4th dimension (time) in one direction. We cant percieve time as what it is (probably) we dont even know what its supposed to be we dont have a clear definition. Thats why time is a mystery none fully understands. There is no theory of time. We just know it exists and is a dimension we dont really get.

Sry for triple post my ps3 browser doesnt allow 2 quotes in one post.