Is There a Difference Between Trusting Scientists and Trusting Preachers?

[SteveII]

You said a preacher's goal is "enlisting as many more believers as possible". That description is incomplete. You are missing a very important component: motive. A preacher's motive is not numbers, it's changing people's lives.

Science changed people's lives in a century, more than all religions did over millennia. And for the better, not worse.
Preachers only talk about changing lives - science delivers.

That is not a conclusion you can make because you are comparing apples and oranges. Even if you don't believe religion is true, it certainly has had an effect and purpose over the millennia. 

In general, the comparison "why do I accept the scientists and reject the preachers?" in the OP is just nonsense as well as a false dichotomy. I accept both.

That's because you don't comprehend either. To a simple minded lay-person both science and theology appear equally inscrutable and abstract. And even if you can see contradictions between religious doctrine and scientific observation - the magical thinking is so emotionally pleasing, that you ignore them, or accept lackluster, ad hoc apologetics, in order to keep up your dualistic, fantastic model of reality.

If the scientists told you that your smart-phone was operating on the basis of magic miracles from Jesus - you'd have no way of knowing if it was true. Surely - omnipotent god could have made the iPhone and neither you nor anyone you personally know can make one - so it must mean what you were told is true, right?

Luckily science, as a method of gathering and implementing knowledge works reliably and consistently, which is why it doesn't have a vested interest in deceiving anyone. Which is something you can't say about any religion.

What contradictions are there between science and religion? Your (and most of this thread's) false dichotomy continues to be nonsense. It will never be an either or. If you think it is, you have incorrectly understood one, the other, or both.