Photons and determinism, part 2

[Mudhammam]

Perhaps I'm just pig dick ignorant here, but I can't get past the fact that it takes a photon 8 minutes to get to the Earth from the surface of the sun. I understand that if left unimpeded, 8 minutes travel time would 'seem' infinitesimal to a photon, but don't understand the argument how this translates into zero distance.

I think it's perfectly acceptable to pontificate about a photon perceiving the journey to be instantaneous; the same as our inability to differentiate nanoseconds from instantaneous. To then state as fact that no distance was traveled by the photon and reason necessary truths from this seems unreasonable.

I can never wrap my brain around where that actually leaves "the perspective of the photon" emitted from a galaxy so distant that it can never reach us due to inflation. People have explained it to me before and I'm always just left dumbfounded.