As for the various evils and horrors of life, the Christian philosopher will say that the meaning of life is not to have a nice comfortable life without suffering or tragedy. Rather the meaning of life is to know God and to love and worship Him. This is why he created the universe. And this is so valuable that it somehow makes up for all of life’s horrors. Swinburne seems to think that you can’t have free beings with real choices and not also have all of the horrors. The Christian thinks it’s worth it, and other people disagree, but it’s hard to see how you could settle this question.
Incidentally, you should all listen to the episode of ‘Unbelievable’ (a UK Christian radio show) where Richard Swinburne and Bart Ehrman go head to head on the problem of evil. It is embarrassing and painful to listen to. Personally I think Swinburne is an absolute disgrace. Bart Ehrman tried his best not to lose his cool, but it’s very difficult listening to a cold and unfeeling ivory-tower Christian philosopher talking about recent floods and earthquakes and so on. Bart almost certainly wanted to punch him, and so did I. But again, as to the question of whether philosophy can settle any of this, I don’t think it can. Swinburne, Plantinga and their many followers will continue putting out this stuff, and Christian philosophy will probably go from strength to strength.
When I say that Swinburne (and Plantinga, et al) are interesting and at times persuasive, I’m clearly not talking about this feature of their views, which I find as you say disgraceful.
Incidentally the issue of free will is a red herring in this regard. Putting aside the fact that libertarian free will is incoherent, God could have allowed the choices and mitigated their evil effects. Putting that aside, none of this approaches the so-called “natural evils” of floods, earthquakes, tornadoes, volcanoes, viruses, cancers, etc. In a particularly disgraceful footnote in one of his most famous books, Plantinga blames all that on demonic forces, as though the existence of such forces would get an omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly good God off the hook somehow.
All that said, I can’t fathom why you would say that such a clearly broken philosophical enterprise should be described as going “from strength to strength”! Certainly in philosophy departments worldwide it is not. Christian philosophy is pretty much risible in all but the most theologically oriented departments, and apart from a handful of people like Swinburne and Plantinga there are very few believing philosophers. (I suppose most of them will end up in theology departments anyway).
You say you don’t think philosophy can settle any of this. To repeat my final point, if you think that you haven’t been paying attention. 
Philosophy has settled it. These folks are the philosophical equivalents of creationists, at least when it comes to theological issues.
