Plus of course even a cursory knowledge of the Apollo landing would show that the pilot (Aldrin?) nearly screwed it up by being human. He messed with the computer when he should not have according to SOP and caused it buffer overrun failures.
Yes indeed. And the human mission controllers made the decision that the landing could continue. I guess an automated system would have aborted.
No answer was given to the previous point that some situations cannot be foreseen and some situations require imagination to resolve. The Hudson river was mentioned, but I would also offer the example of the successful ditching of an RAF Nimrod in 1995. That was as a result of a wing fire, the progress of which was monitored by a human crew member who gave verbal descriptions of the damage as it progressed. The pilot decided to ditch although just a handful of miles from a suitable runway and later examination of the aircraft validated that decision. What would an automated system have done?
OK, so we can argue probabilities of such events. But to me, the key point is that made by Uplinker; that all systems are designed and built by humans and are subject to human error. There are stats for accidents caused by pilot error, but there are no equivalent stats for pilot 'saves'. No system could or ever will be designed and/or built to perfection, and removing the human pilot would remove the last chance to save the day.
Finally, these are complex, interesting and important debates and no one contributor should claim to have all the relevant experience and answers. So it's a shame to see accusations of ignorance and such like being thrown around.