I confess. I have used both my first and middle names in this forum. For you see I was first Anglican, hence Richard, the great English king who never lived in England. Then I converted to Judiaism, hence David, same relationship. My mother was a prophet. But now I'm essentially Hindu, but know of no way to become one formally. I just practice my own mantras, a combination of Hindu, Buddhist and Jewish words. I'm also a PhD in physics from Harvard and so I sometimes use physics concepts without explanation just to save time. And finally, you haven't caught on to my hidden agenda. By the way I've never been a "born again Christian" or a fundamentalist. But I am a creationist in the sense that a something that most of us refer to as God created the world and continues in my opinion to influence that creation. I too think of our universe (there may be many others) as billions of years old. However, what I deduce from the equations of relativity and their many published solutions is that the speed of light (in vacuum) does not have to be constant. Quoting Rovelli was just a convenient source of many to support this view. The hidden agenda is that if we allow the speed of light to vary exponentially, then the fundamentalists faith in a 8,000 year old universe can be consistent with our belief in a universe of billions of years. In short, it amounts to a redefinition of the meaning of the word "year" in the bible. The Anglicans did that years ago when they determined that evolution was consistent with Genesis by claiming that the length of a year in Genesis was variable and somewhat longer than our year. Essentially they decided that a biblical year was really an epic. All I have done is to express the same thing mathematically in a manner that seems to be within the constraints of General Relativity. Perhaps I could enhance my income writing for Creationists magazines expressing proof (in their minds) that the universe could be 8,000 years old. Richard David Ruquist

• Re: No Time for General Relativity - daViper - July 22, 1999 - 20:02 UTC