Unlike the rest of you guys, I believe, I teach econ. So, let me tell a story from personal experience
At one point in time I had to teach a certain class for which there are two common textbooks (there are more, but these were the ones I considered) at the intermediate level (i.e., almost without math). One seemed to be perfect: a good selection of topics, reasonable course outline, wonderful. I tried teaching - and I couldn't. The text made no sense! When I was merely reading it, it all seemed nice enough - but when I tried to explain the logic of it, I simply couldn't do it, even to myself. In fact, more often than not, even when I agreed w/ the conclusion, I just could see that the argument in the book was either outright wrong, or missing important steps and assumptions.
The next year I took another book. It seemed, on the first reading, somewhat sloppy. The outline was not what I would use. But teaching from it was a piece of cake! Even when the author made mistakes (and there were places), identifying and fixing those was easy. The trick: this book was a translation from math into English. I could quickly translate it back, understand the logic of it and explain it. The key assumptions were clear (the author was forced by the requirements of the math language, in which he was thinking, to state them). It was an outright pleasure.
So, what's the lesson? We don't use math in economics to "look more scientific". We use it, because it disciplines. Yes, there are people who can see through sloppy logic of an English argument. But, in my experience, such people are few and far in between. It is much easier to do this in math. So, if somebody is refusing to use math he is, probably, doing it because he is trying to cheat you: the cheating is so much harder to detect in words
