GUIs only seem simpler because they require only 1 button to operate, but the fact is, most GUIs have as steep a learning curve as command prompts. However, once you've learned the command prompt (which is quite easy to do once you set your mind to it), you are far more productive and faster at executing tasks on the computer.
Think of it like trying to get something done in real life by instructing another person on what to do. Which is simpler, pointing and touching things that this other person needs to manipulate in a certain way (the GUI) or just plain out telling them what you want done (the command prompt) ? It's much easier to verbosely express the tasks needed than to walk all around the room and pointing to things and then pointing to other things, hoping the poor soul figures out what you mean (move what object from what table to what other table ?).
Most people don't want to learn the command prompt because of one nasty little detail : Fear.
GUI's have a much faster learning curve than command prompt. There's no arguing around this because GUI's are written for regular people where command prompts are written for engineer minded users. I have learnt command prompt because I was curious, but there's no way in hell my father could learn it at his age. He even sometimes forgets basic finder operations.
About being faster, even if you learn bash, you don't really get faster than Finder at first, you need to keep using bash for years to get the "muscle memory" in place and until then you'll still keep doing faster using Finder, even if you know basic bash commands. Just like Finder usage gets much faster in time as well. I can probably navigate in Finder 10 times faster than my friends can because I use computer 10 times more than they do and I know all the shortcuts, I have configured lots of hotkeys for basic tasks and bound a ton of key combinations to my 11 buttoned mouse.
And the analogy you gave is wrong. In real life, pointing is slower than saying the name because the other "person" does have a consciousness of its own, so he/she might misunderstand what object we pointed to. But in GUI, what you point will be always the correct object. How many times do people misclick using their mice? If they do it often I'd suspect they have no idea how to use their mouse, or maybe they should buy a better one or learn how to customize the sensitivity settings.
About people not learning command prompt, I don't think it's fear at all. It's about not having time for it. Mac users are mostly professionals, unlike me, who use their computers to get jobs done. If they are going to spend any time on meta tasks like learning command prompt, that time is much better spent on learning new programs which effects their job in a much positive way than command prompt will. Even if my father could spend couple months to learn basic bash (and there's no way he can but even if he was able to), that time is much better spent on learning Adobe InDesign or Illustrator, since he still doesn't know those apps fully and consistently asks other people whenever he needs something done. And the same applies to the majority of professionals who use macs for their jobs.
Btw, since you know bash much more than I do, I have one question though. Sometimes I want to copy 5000 files from a folder to somewhere else, but not the entire folder, is there a way to use "cp" to copy those files without bash actually typing 5000 names into the terminal window? Because whenever I select and drag 5000 files to a terminal window, it takes forever for the names to list in terminal so it's faster to just drag them using finder and start the copy process. So what I want is for terminal to not write down the names of the files one by one before I can hit enter to start cp and couldn't figure out how to do it.
