Nobody here is suggesting for a minute that hand flying skills are maintained in marginal or hazardous conditions. Obviously judicious use of all the aids available will increase safety and reduce the pilot workload. But the day all those aids decide not work is not the day day to discover your basic general handling skills are significantly lacking. It probably won't be 8/8 blue when you need to get back down manually, so you had better be reasonably competent at it.
The "how big one's balls are" comment is indicative of maybe being exposed to some old school thinking where real men (and woman) don't use autopilots. That attitude is as outdated and dangerous as the opposite "never hand fly" approach. Both are stupid, and that is why once again on this forum we return to the issue of sound captaincy. If you can't make safe, consistent decisions, you shouldn't be in the front. As others have mentioned, the Air France and Air Asia accidents did not involve "big balls" decisions that exposed the aircraft and passengers to a perilous fate. They both started with completely innocuous and easily solvable problems (airspeed indications and rudder trim), but the subsequent actions or inactions rapidly took the aircraft into irrecoverable situations through a lack of situational awareness and inability to hold or recover a straight and level trimmed attitude. There isn't a more basic but more essential flying skill than that. In a helicopter you won't have 38,000 feet to figure out where you screwed up, so being able to recover to stable flight better be second nature. If you have inadvertently become a button pusher instead of a pilot, you might be in for an interesting trip one day.
Any why are we encouraged to be button pushers? Because it's safer. Statistically if you can get aircraft to operate with less human intervention, you get less mistakes. But don't be a slave to it. When the bean-counters figured out it was far less costly to throw everyone in a sim rather than have steely-eyed check pilots pulling back levers on a whim, training became focused on systems and system management. The assumption was all the handing skills would be maintained during operations and the emergency drills were covered in the sim rides. That wasn't true. Many pilots now complain that sim rides are unrealistic in terms of emergencies, and handling skills are hugely variable. That is not a constant approach to safety.
The bottom line is basic handling skills are essential, so keep them sharp, but you don't need to expose you or your pax to any additional risks keeping them up. Simulators are essential, but they are only a piece of the overall puzzle. Use sound judgement and all the tools available.