Those who want to keep their hand flying skills are just idiots who believe themselves "the right stuff" test pilots.
Real people on board = leave the automatics in and maximise situational awareness. Manual flight immediately raises flight deck workload.
In short, life's too short for manual flight in the commercial arena. As a pax, knowing what you know, with your wife and kids on board, would you prefer the automatics/flight director to be on or off?
I recall an occasion several years ago when, just after rotation (on a latest generation Fly-By-Wire airplane) at ~ 50 ft RA and long before we had a "positive climb" indication the Flight Director suddenly commanded an immediate hard right turn. Needless to say there was no incident because I WAS FLYING. With the likes of those pro-automatics people uttering comments such as those quoted above, were this a pilotless airplane such a non-event would in no uncertain terms have resulted in a crash (and likely major loss of life of SLF & crew).
You can automate actions, but it'll be a very long time before you can automate
REAL TIME, IN-FLIGHT DECISION MAKING with an infinite permutation of differing situations. The two are very different issues. Good luck to you fellas