Is There a Difference Between Trusting Scientists and Trusting Preachers?

[robvalue]

The difference is that scientists are making testable claims. Theologians are not.

Even if you can't personally get out there and test those claims, they are available for all to see, and for everyone to try and prove wrong. They've painted a target on their back, essentially. It's a scientist's job to disprove phoney stuff, and that they do. When some bullshit does leak through somehow, it gets discredited fairly quickly. Proving a major theory wrong would carry huge prestige as well. The idea that no one has bothered to check is stretching credulity.

Theologians just make unfalsifiable claims, almost all of the time. Such claims are useless. When they accidentally make a testable non-trivial claim about reality, it's normally proven false very quickly.