My way isn’t a shortcut at all, it just keeps things within the realm of what’s testable with complete sufficiency.
Your way tries to be a shortcut by casting away answers to some other untestable realm. “The answers are there, but out of your reach to disprove them” - how convenient. And says who? Why should we believe you when they’re just as inaccessible to you? You only say they logically must be because they’re there but not here. Firstly, that isn’t a necessary logical sequitur, and secondly I showed you why they are here after all, you just need to change your perspective to something that better fits the reality of our own testable realm. 2000 years of thought and searching can do that to old ideas, smart as they appeared to be in their own time.
“Something cannot come from nothing”
Obviously eternal forms are supposed to be “something” just as much as the “apparent world”, and the proposition is that neither can come from nothing.
“Something can come from something”
This is intended to apply to the “apparent world”, but not “eternal forms”. Eternal forms are supposed to render the proposition invalid: “comes from” doesn’t apply to it. They neither “come from” something nor nothing, they always were.
The implication is that the apparent world has to come from “somewhere” (supposedly from eternal forms), but why do eternal forms escape the validity of the question but the apparent world does not?
If the apparent world was eternal, then “something cannot come from nothing” is equally invalid to say about it as it is to eternal forms.
An alternative is that “comes from” is valid not just for the apparent world.
Are eternal forms themselves something that has to come from something? Do they themselves have eternal forms? Can something come from itself? Can’t the apparent world continually unfold unto itself? That’s how it appears at least, so if it is implied that it comes from something why does it need to come from a thing that’s different to itself (e.g. eternal forms)?
So we have 3 questions:
Is “comes from” a necessity?
If so, can something “come from” itself?
If neither, what is the “something else” that something “comes from”?
You have to answer “yes for the apparent world, but no for the eternal”, “no” and “somewhere that you can’t prove it doesn’t”. That’s just 1 answer and not the “best theory” by any stretch. You have to prove the apparent world isn’t eternal for the first question, you have to prove something can’t come from itself for the second, and you have to prove that where it comes from is out of all possible things “somewhere that you can’t prove it doesn’t” - which by definition you can’t!
The better theory is that if “comes from” is a necessity, the apparent world comes from itself, continually unfolding unto itself exactly how it appears and completely within the real realms of testability.