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I think Marty and several others have hit on the problem; the word
"believe" often has a semi-religious overtone. To many people "believe"
is equivalent to "faith in something that will never change" or even "my
strongly held opinion that I have no intention of changing no matter
what".
But most often scientists have something slightly different in mind. If
I say I believe in something, for example evolution or the theory of
relativity, what I really mean is that I think there is good evidence
supporting it and no credible evidence against it. So it is reasonable
to believe in it, at least until there was credible evidence to the
contrary.
The idea that we can (and ought to) change our beliefs when we get new,
better evidence seems to be a foreign idea to most people. Yet most
people do this all the time, at least for beliefs that aren't so
central. We believe our neighbor is honest and then we find his name in
the paper as a crook so we change our belief.
I have no problem if someone uses the word believe in the above sense,
either for belief in god or belief in evolution or even belief that
evolution doesn't occur. Once we understand "belief" as something open
to change based on evidence we can start talking about evidence.