Burnswannabe,
Your comments made me think (always a dangerous thing). Up until AFR447, I said that FBW has done more good than harm (much more). Until AFR447, there had been zero in-service stalls with a FBW equipped transport. Clearly this has been a great safety leap forward.
However, I agree with my colleagues that pilot skills have atrophied. Pilots have (indeed humans have) great difficulty sorting out multiple failure indications.
It's not just Airbus. Just read about NWA 6231 flown by a colleague. When the report came out, I said "how could he be so dumb!." I few months later, I found out just how dumb I could be. Fortunately, I came out of the clouds fairly quickly and it was just an incident.
We need to rethink our training. We hardly get any handflying, and then the autopilot hands us a handfull of airplane, in turbulence, with a lot of flashing lights. I'd like to think I could, but seriously, I don't know.