Or they, like me, have constant interactions with lay people who constantly understand these things to mean their view of a universe guided by an intelligence is correct.
I get it, it's just hard to avoid in English, but it is still a (small) failure in clear science communication.
I think the worst case of this in science is the way that evolution is described in a way that implies an active process rather than just random mutations which may or may not make organisms more fit for survival.
Yeah, I think that's the most common one. Strongly connected with the idea that evolution is "improvement" or some kind of step along a road to being "better", which I've seen trip up a lot of people who normally don't get confused about this kind of thing.
I get it, it's just hard to avoid in English, but it is still a (small) failure in clear science communication.