[Serious] Is the Past Real?

[Neo-Scholastic]

Indeed, I am taking the temporary stance that the the past has the same ontological status as the future. That the future does not exist (yet) seems commonplace compared to the notion that the past does in some sense exist. Yet the future as what might be based on present reality seems no different from the past as what could have been based on what is presently available. So why do we think the past is real but the future is not?

Sorry for the double post. I think because part of the definition of real has to include actualization. Things in the past did happen, and now is pure actualization, but the further away from now we look into the future the less it can be actualized.

Here is my secular argument:

There is nothing outside actual physical reality.
Physical reality keeps overwriting itself in the present like a claymation model.
Since actual physical reality is everthing there is no independent remaining record of what actually was remains.
As such, there really is not a definite way things were.
The garden of forking pathes opens in both directions. Possible futures spread before us. At the same time, the number of possible pathes leading to now also expand.