[Serious] Is the Past Real?

[Belacqua]

I have my memories of things past and many photos to verify people, places, and things from the past...near and far.

Not really sure about the reason for questioning the existence of the past.  Without events in the past there'd be no now and no future.

Today doesn't erase yesterday.  It's not an Etch-A-Sketch world.

From a presentist perspective, your photos and memories are real because they exist in the present. But in many cases the objects in them are not present and therefore not real. The question is to what do those photos and memories actually refer since the referents no longer exist?

So yes, I say etch-a-sketch world is on the table.  Unless you have a reason for dismissing it. The past is story constucted from real forms in the present.

I think your position is supported here by the fact that memory is often faulty. It's pretty well proven that what we recall has been edited and interpreted. The memory we have presently in our mind is more or less tenuously related to the event that originally prompted it.

Likewise souvenirs and artifacts. They obviously originated in the past, but their meaning and the associations they call to mind exist in the present. 

Maybe we should say we have every reason to believe that the past WAS real, when we were in the past, but it doesn't exist now. (Or rather, it doesn't exist FOR US now. If it's true that time is made in the mind, or that there is a God for whom all time exists simultaneously, then the past does exist still, but outside of our minds.)