I don't rely on anyone else for my information. It's incredibly phony to hide behind closed doors and say "Well, I'm an expert, and you're not, so you'd better trust me." It's equally phony to accept something just because a number of people believe it, or because some "experts" believe it.
For example, rumby mentioned evolution. I'll agree, most creationists know squat about evolution. But I'll just as quickly tell you that most evolutionists know squat about evolution as well.
This sounds a little ridiculous. How do you not rely on anyone else? When you have a headache, do you go down to the lab to see if aspirin
really reduces pain? Before you eat a bowl of cereal, do you whip out your calorimeter to see if the nutrition information on the side of the box is 100% accurate? Before you read a history book, do you go treading through primary sources and conducting archaeological digs?
It's not phony at all for an expert to claim superiority in a topic if they have studied it for any given period of time. There is so much to know in our world that it is literally impossible to keep abreast with everything in just a particular field, let alone a discipline. You rely on thousands of people for information; when you go to school, when you read a book, when you take medicine, when you eat food, etc. etc. When you look at the front page of a newspaper, I sincerely doubt your first thought is "Well, I should head down to see if there
really was an earthquake in Haiti, because I can't rely on the AP for information."