Distrust of automation is a healthy thing, and old school mentality is why things didn't get far out of shape whenever the above was done to me, Rananim, but we also have to accept that culture and mentality have changed over the past few decades. People trust computers now more than the older generations did. Whatever we think of it, that is the world we live in.
However, my post was not a hypothesis of what happened or why, or any kind of supposition about the pilots in this sad event. It was to clarify the autoflight system operation for the sake of the discussion as many on here are making assumptions about how it is used that are not right for the 737.