How to incur the burden of proof (Score 1)

I'm not sure that the burden of proof automatically falls on the party making "the affirmative claim" in such matters (sure, in the absence of decisive evidence one way or another, y'all can believe what you like), but it does seem to me that Davies incurs that burden by implying that there exist compelling reasons for believing as he does. Doesn't his own rhetoric oblige him to state what those reasons are?

There is a difference between saying "I do not believe that the fact [?] that the universe has generated self-awareness through conscious beings is a trivial detail" and asserting that "[t]his can be no trivial detail" (my emphasis). In the latter instance, one needs to say just why it can't.

Davies seems to assume that anyone who accepts that what has happened is that "the universe has generated self-awareness" (is my limited human awareness really awareness of the universe? All of it?) will be so impressed by this fact that they will find it impossible to regard it as "a minor byproduct of mindless...forces".

Fine: if you look at it that way, no doubt what you see looks very impressive. But its persuasive force is not rational, any more than it is rational to be persuaded of the existence of god by one's own sense of humble awe in the face of the grandeur of creation. "Gosh wow" sentiments are a fine part of being human, ect., but they aren't much use as a support for theories.

I am unable to see in Davies' language - "I cannot believe...too intimate...surely a fact of fundamental significance...no trivial detail...we are truly meant to be here" - anything more substantial than a stirringly expressed "gosh wow" sentiment, and it is dishonest of him to write as if that the force of that sentiment dislodged the need for rational argumentation.