I think what they meant isn't that they should find religion, but that the natural tendency of all people to subscribe to some sort of higher belief/metaphysical truth about the world has projected itself onto the sciences in absence of where it would usually go. Now we find people "believing" in the faith of a hypothetical magic science the way they used to a god or gods. It's not far from what you said. Your observation is simply how they negotiate the sophistry of discarding the hard truths of science.