Captain Stable and Crossunder - while I mostly agree with you, if we only practice hand flying in good weather we are missing out on some of the important bits of practice. On my previous aircraft (small base) I was known as someone who liked hand flying (only if it was safe to do so and the Captain wasn't against the idea). Because of this and my acceptance of hand flying from the other seat, some Captains felt happy to hand fly with me and if I flew a manual approach would say 'about time I had a go' or similar on the next one. All well and good, except that some of the hand flying was not quite up to scratch at times and after a couple of slightly dodgy approaches (visual at night, different Captains) I decided that it was better to practice in a variety of conditions. Obviously I would not fly a Cat2 approach to minimums in manual, but we do need to practice in cloud as it is different and can sometimes be quite disorientating even with experienced crews. It is too easy to sneak a peek in good weather and then we are cheating ourselves - and I have seen it happen so many times.
My own flying improved drastically (ie capacity increase and smoother) after practising no flight director approaches. In fact, when I first started and used the automatics most of the time, I was dissappointed at my lack of capacity when I took them out. Now I practice a lot more and I am a better pilot for it.
Busy TMA's are another place to practice - if we do not have the capacity (from either seat) to do it then we are lacking essential skills.
One Captain I flew with, complained after 2 manual departures with me flying and asked me to put in the autopilot - I did to preserve CRM, but his reasoning was that he had 'had enough for today' total hands on time was about 12 minutes (for the day) and I must admit that scared me.
Emergencies - different matter. We should do whatever we need to maintain capacity and assure a safe outcome. The autopilot is not always your best friend in that situation though as I discovered in the sim. Most of the time - I would put it in, but be prepared to take it out and hand fly if it would be beneficial, and practice in a variety of conditions makes your capacity much bigger.
Crossunder - Wasn't so long ago that a large aircraft hit a hill because the pilots were heads in dealing with the automatics instead of getting on with flying the aeroplane. Middle road is what we need, not extremes like Mr 411A.