First of all, if you only have never flown a Boeing, it is almost impossible to enter into this debate with any degree of understanding. The original starter of the thread, 737Jock, is indeed an Airbus pilot who has flown both the 737 and A320 series of aircraft. In my experience he is rare among Airbus pilots in preferring the Boeing to the Airbus, having done more than a year on the aircraft. Nonetheless, he is a sharp guy and is completely entitled to his view, but as I say it is a minority opinion in the Airbus community.
Regarding AF447, the only people to blame there were the pilots in the same way that the pilots of the Turkish Airlines 737 that crashed at Amsterdam were to blame there. Both faced reasonable technical failures that they did not notice, failed to act upon and subsequently stalled the aircraft because they could not recover the situation. I am not a 737 fan, but I recognise that whatever insidious failure those pilots faced, the ultimate cause of the crash was pilot error.
Now onto this latest incident. What 737Jock is absolutely correct in saying is that a situation can arise in the rarest of circumstances (one such known incident in the history of the Airbus, recovered without a single casualty) where you can lose control of the aircraft in the vertical plane despite making correct inputs to attempt recovery. On the surface of things a mad situation - as indeed it is. What I would have to counter that argument with is that a far worse situation arose in the past with 'rudder hardover' in the 737 - icing causing problems with with rudder actuator on a handful of occasions which led to the loss of a number of aircraft with many casualties. No one said that the aircraft was unsafe, when arguably it was. Overall the fly-by-wire system on the Airbus has saved way more lives than it has lost and has been a fantastic addition to airline safety.
For reasons I am at a loss to explain the 737 soldiers on like Grandfather's old axe with 6 new handles and 5 new heads. It was obsolete 20 years ago and yet there is talk of a 737Max which has to have raised undercarriage to fit in the engines - bizarre. Driven by a desire to avoid a new type-rating Boeing have been forced to make do with an old banger which is poshed-up to look like something new. Give me an Airbus any time.