I'll come out of the closet: I also wonder why Bash is still so important in 2014. I think it simply is unintuitive and cumbersome for all tasks that you don't routinely do, and only a small minority of people that are using Bash are doing it in such a fluid way that the potential benefits of the command line can be reaped. For the rest of us it mainly feels like http://xkcd.com/1168/
In summary, I think that: 1) Bash is overripe for being replaced by something else, perhaps a more user-friendly and interactive shell that is built from the ground up and not a fruitsalad of ad-hoc solutions created a few decades ago. 2) Using Bash and praising its benefits is not only so popular because it has positive practical aspects. It also seems to have become culturally ingrained in the geek community in an irrational way, like an initiation rite that separates insiders from outsiders.