In general, it's filling the vacuum left by religion. One part of that is what you identified: people generally need something greater than themselves to identify with, and "intellectual" is a tempting option.
Another part of it is that people generally crave certainty and fear the unknown. Religion fills that need by providing crisp, clean answers that don't provide a lot of room for questions and "what if"s. In the absence of a traditional organized religion, people try to fill that void with what seems to be the new, popular replacement—science.
Unfortunately, science is by design all about uncertainty. As soon as it becomes a dogma it ceases to be science.
It's not a surprise that people put "science" up on a pedestal when science education is too often about getting the correct answer to questions. Instead of asking questions and understanding the limitations of any approach to answering them. Restraint and humility aren't exciting, but they're so important.
If anyone "believes", "trusts", "follows", etc. science, then they are doing science wrong.
The most fundamental element to science is skepticism. Following the essays of a scientist is no different than following the teachings of a priest.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38859965
"Believing", "trusting", "following" science means using information from an entity that presumably follows the scientific method to ascertain their information, and is otherwise fallible and subject to change pending new data.
This is in contrast to "believing" information from an entity that did not procure information via the scientific method, and is usually infallible and not subject to change pending new data.
We probably agree on the right way to apply “skepticism” re science.
But the self-described “skeptics” I know often ignore evidence. Which is one way the word (Words! They suck!) can be validly interpreted.
I would say the fundamental element of science is “the evidence based search to continually improve our current understanding”.
I particularly like how “understanding” inoculates against the more static, subjective, bias friendly, identity and ideologically based, implications of “belief”.
What's the alternative? Following every single argument every researcher makes back to the beginning and replicate their work before you base any further work or thought on what they did or said? That's not really feasible in most domains.
And, personally, I'd rather call the basis of science curiosity and not (just) skepticism.
It strikes me as a response to a trend callousness and deliberate ignorance.
Signs like these take a strawman version of "the other side" and define the residents of the home in opposition to that strawman. It's evidence that the person who put it up views themselves as part of the culture war, not evidence that they strive to be kind to and understanding of people who are different than them.
I This House We Believe That
Simplistic Platitudes
Trite Tautologies
And Semantically Overloaded Aphorisms
Are Poor Substitudes
For Respectful And Rational Discussions
About Complex Ideas
I wonder if whoever coined the phrase knew it was a joke deprecating whoever buys it. Like those movies where the point is "those monsters are horrible, aren't they? yeah, you are doing basically the same right now."
'Science' isn't something to believe in, it's a testable thing instead. That's kinda the core idea.
You don't have to believe in science, if anything science says that you should be skeptical until you do the experiments yourself.
This also goes up there with the "in this house we believe SCIENCE IS REAL" signs.
We're currently living through the replication crisis and are awash in fraudulent academic journals. I don't think people who say this stuff would actually engage with you in a conversation about proper p-values for given sample sizes. So it's really just shorthand for trying to associate yourself to a certain intellectual class.