I have seen it written that the most dangerous thing for a person is ignorance of ignorance. If he does not know he is ignorant, he will not do anything about it. The trend seems to be to let real flying skills go, and to become good managers of the systems. Indeed that is the only choice for a 'Bus driver. So 'pilots' will lose their flying skills and not even be aware of it. Sure, the airplanes keep getting better and they make up for a lot of the degraded piloting skills, but there will come a day when the pilot will lose the automatics, or the airplane will not be capable under the conditions, and the pilot will have to take manual control. If he has not practiced, how will he manage? Like the China Airlines pilot in CKS, I would imagine.
The crosswind limit for autoland on the B747 is 25 knots. It is 30 knots for a manual landing. So the pilot must take over under the 'extreme' conditions. How is he to do that if he always chooses runways into wind, ILS, FD, Autopilot, etc, and never flies the airplane if he cannot see where he is going?
The day I cannot perform in any weather (well, better than CAT3) at least as well as the autopilot/automatics, to the level that the airplane is always under positive control, and the passengers are comfortable and safe, I will hang up my hat. Since I want that day to be a long way off, I will continue to maintain my flying skills the only way it can be done; by practice.
You guys can sit back and let the systems do the work for you, remember, the only real danger is ignorance of your own ignorance.