There must be countless instances where an airline pilot's background and experience in lighties has saved a potentially catastrophic situation. The B767 fuel starvation incident over Canada a few years back, where they landed it in a glider strip, is a classic example that springs to mind - I'm sure there are plenty of others.
For sure, the new generation of airliners bear sod all resemblance to the 1950s design trainers that we all learned on. But IMHO all you'll get if you train someone from scratch on something as synthetic as an Airbus sim, is someone with twinkle fingers on the automatics and no basic appreciation of stick and rudder flying. All well and good until the day when those EFIS screens all go black at once and they actually have to look out the window and fly the damn thing ... I think there'd be some fundamental shortfalls that would make themselves evident pretty quickly.