Dear Leshan,
Your perspective is an interesting one. Truly, I despise the implications of "TOE", but follow industry-wide nomenclature regarding a unification of matter and interactions.
Even if we understood everything/ nearly everything, we may still have limitations such as the speed of light and Planck's constant. So the gap between human-like vs. God-like may be the gap between knowing how something works in theory vs. being able to apply that knowledge in a practical manner. I don't consider this knowledge God-like. If I did, I probably wouldn't share it with anyone else.
Regarding "closing all physics laboratories", I worry that our great experiments such as the LHC are getting so expensive and expansive that we may not be able to (easily) trump the last great experiment. For the sake of all future Supercolliders (my thesis modeled phenomena for the International Linear Collider ILC that hasn't been built yet), I hope that the LHC discovers something - the Higgs would be nice...
I think that the form of an SU(11) boson GUT is large enough to contain any Theory of Quantum Gravity - even though we do not currently have that Theory. I referred to the need to enumerate Feynman Diagrams and Lagrangian components in my "What is Ultimately Possible" Conclusion. Furthermore, I think that the form of an SU(13) boson GUT is large enough to contain the effects of Fermion Generations, and the CKM Quark and PMNS Neutrino Mixing Matrices (more details in the attached Ref. [3]) - even though we may not yet fully understand all of these effects either.
In other words, I don't have all of the answers, but maybe I have the right framework and maybe WE (humanity) can work together to flesh out the details. As they say "The Genius is in the Generalities and the Devil is in the Details".
As a Particle Physicist, I love symmetries. If these symmetries lead to THE TOE, then that is wonderful. If we can't find THE TOE because of philosophical or mathematical (Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem) limitations, then hopefully it will bring us closer to a full understanding of particles and interactions. Why do physicists chase grand theories? Why do dogs chase cars? It is part of our nature that we must always ask the difficult questions and keep pushing at the horizon.
The unification of the three strongest interactions has been done: Standard Model and Georgi-Glashow SU(5). We need to unify Gravity with those three forces, and we need to unify boson and fermion particle content. I think my Geometrical model is large enough to accomplish these goals.
Is the TOE just a mathematical model? Mathematics doesn't even like the idea of a TOE!
Good luck on your essay!
Sincerely, Ray Munroe