On 7.: even if you were to successfully show that the real world reduces to some lower, possibly more/less complicated, level (as particle physics did, and nuclear physics did, and, well, physics really likes doing...) that next level is still "the real world" just understood in slightly more detail.

I agree that making particles out of smaller particles wouldn't make me un-confused about the sense in which there is something rather than nothing.

That doesn't mean there isn't some set of concepts and reductions that would make me unconfused. Eliezer has a good description of how such processes can go at Righting a wrong question.