The first step towards philosophy is incredulity. Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe.
Religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes.
If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants. Einstein, twenty-six years old, only three years away from crude privation, still a patent examiner, published in the Annalen der Physik in 1905 five papers on entirely different subjects. Three of them were among the greatest in the history of physics. The third paper was the special theory of relativity, which quietly amalgamated space, time and matter into one fundamental unity. This last paper contains no references and quotes no authority.