[hansen]

All our accepted model of nature assume that in some sense time exists. But in general relativity it doesn’t make much sense to speak of a single event. In the same way it doesn’t make much sense to speak of a single point in the euclidean plane (you can only localize one point relative to another one).

So some people (like Rovelli) think one should try to formulate relativity only in terms relations of events. This might be relevant in a more fundamental theory of spacetime but on a classical level it’s irrelevant. You can measure the geometry of spacetime in our solar system w/o disturbing it. The gravitational field of e.g. some satellite is negligible to the gravitational field of planets and the sun.