Where do I begin?

Get yourself a Nikon D5200 and a 50mm f1.8 lens.

Firstly buy a book about the basics and read it, you need to understand how a camera works, what aperture, shutter speed and depth of field are etc.

Then go and buy a second hand Pentax K1000 with a standard 50mm lens and a few rolls of Ilford HP5, it's a popular old film camera for beginners. You'll learn the basics of photography better using that than any other camera, plus it's cheap so if it turns out photography isn't for you... you haven't just wasted $1000 on some expensive digital camera that depreciated in value massively the second you bought it.

Referring to any religion as a mental handicap sounds inappropriate, despite being true.

I'm sure that photography is an area I want to learn more about. I currently work with lighting and photography about everyday in the 3d modeling world as an architectural render and I've got "exposure triangle" down so far.

I've been interested in photography for a long time and the goal now it to move into the real world and apply the things I learned. I need a camera that's affordable and and produce fantastic results. I'm ready for more than a point-n-shoot.

A Pentax K1000 is a fully manual slr camera with interchangeable lenses, not a point and shoot, it's an excellent camera capable of taking excellent pictures, hence why it was so popular with student photographers in its day. I was just advising what I thought would be the best camera for you, which I'd still say is the Pentax K1000, does film put you off?

Referring to any religion as a mental handicap sounds inappropriate, despite being true.

I apologize. I didn't intend to call your recommendation a point n shoot. That was just a random thought is all.

No disrespect intended and I really appreciate your feedback.

Also, yes, I would like a digital camera because I don't know traditional film.

Well how an slr film camera works is directly transferable to how a digital slr camera works, the only real difference is how the image is recorded. I personally think there's something wonderful about film and everyone who loves photography should experience it, but, it's your call! The one thing I love about a film camera is you can take the lens off and see exactly what happens when you change the settings, you can see what effect changing the shutter speed has and how the different f-stops effect the aperture (well you'll need a lens with depth of field preview to see this), just whip off the lens, and look inside the camera as you press the shutter release, also you can get a shedload of cheap equipment to play with... I'm not going to win with this am I?

Just go to a decent camera shop, a good independent one with knowledgeable staff and try out some cameras, pick them up and play with them, take a few shots and see how they feel. Most photographers have a preference, you might prefer canon over nikon, olympus, pentax etc. but you'll only know by handling them, you don't have to buy a camera there and then either remember, but a bit of hands on experience is invaluable! All the big makes I mentioned have a few entry level dslr cameras geared towards beginners like yourself, do a bit of googling beforehand so you know a little about all the models that are in your price bracket, most importantly take note of the ones with the best reviews and especially the ones with a lot of poor reviews!

Referring to any religion as a mental handicap sounds inappropriate, despite being true.

Very few professional photographer's use it any more, and it's time-consuming and expensive to get the pictures. Even magnum closed their film processing lab, 3 years ago.

I'd never go back to film now. The work flow is far too time consuming and the results are no better, unless you are working with medium or large format.

Film is a bad recommendation today

No it isn't.

I'm not one of those people that thinks film is better, just an 'experience', an invaluable one at that.

It's quite obvious the op won't touch film with a bargepole though, rendering your reply invalid, to be fair.

Referring to any religion as a mental handicap sounds inappropriate, despite being true.