Science and religion are they compatible?

The NYT has not a dialogue, but a pretty uniformed bit of commentary by people with no real understanding of either science or religion. samples taken from rebuttal letters and what religion and science really say:

"Science begins with the Big Bang theory, and evolution according to Darwin begins with a simple one-cell life. But science can say nothing about what preceded the Big Bang or how life was injected into that simple cell."

Science begins before the Big Bang. Science begins with a singularity prior to the Big Bang. Science also has multiverse theories that account through abstruse mathematical models, why the force of gravity is so weak in our universe. It also explains why our universe must be but one of many. Lisa Randall's simplified view here

How can anyone informed about pre-biotic conditions possibly state that we no nothing prior to cellular life? The simple answer is chemistry. Almost anyone looking for the chemical building blocks of life has found them via tabletop experimentation using plausible chemicals and energies almost certainly found on the pre-biotic earth. From amino acids to ribose to lipid vesicles that are hydrophilic(water loving) on the inside of the membrane to hydrophobic(water fearing) on the outside, we know more and more every day about the conditions of the pre-biotic earth. Even plausible explanations through experimention of the odd chirality of life(left-handed amino acids and right-handed sugars) have been demonstated via preferential biases on opposing mineral crystal faces. This is not nothing.

One could poke holes in every one of the rebuttals, but it as simple as this: Religions have immutable truths without data, science has data but no facts that cannot be overturned on good evidence. The two approaches are fundamentally(no pun intended) different and by my simple definition exclude the other.

It is very odd that the two professors of science do see not this simple fact.

I should state here that while I am hard materialist, I would change my entire worldview given sufficient evidence to do so. The religious have all failed this test as the evidence supporting the scientific method as the most powerful tool to interrogate nature yet devised is measured in Everest-like mountains. Religions almost certainly predate history. Long ago they served the purpose of explaining the ineffable. Religion's time as an explanation for anything has passed. Ascribing anything to God's will, is almost always a lack of grasp of the branch of mathematics known as statistics.