Chemistry: Simple v Complex and Moles

It has been my understanding that science has been all about explaning the world around us in the simplest of terms so that we can all understand it. Personally, I love biology and it follows this formula. Life is complex but this complexity is made up of simple systems.
First, I must say that I am not a genius but neither am I a simpleton. All throughout my college education I received A's and when I didn't get an A in the class it was a B because I just didn't try. I have a graduate degree and am currently back in school pursuing medicine. That being said, let me start my rant.
As I mentioned earlier, life is complex. No one will disagree with that, but life, when broken down, is made of many simple components all put together to form something complex. Chemistry just does not fit into this category. Maybe it has been the professors that I have had or the books I have read, but chemistry seems to start extremely complex only to become more complex. Also, once again it might be my professors and/or the books I've been assigned, it seems that in the 200+ years that chemistry has been around that no one has challenged the interpretations and beliefs since they have been made. Finally, a lot of chemistry cannot be observed, and if I remember correctly, science is all about observation and what can be observed. It just seems that there is a lot of conjecture, "interpretation" of experiments, and unobservable phenomena.
According to the Law of Conservation of Mass, "Mass cannot be created/destroyed, although it may be rearranged in space, and changed into different types of particles. This implies that for any chemical process in a closed system, the mass of the reactants must equal the mass of the products." Thanks Wikipedia! This brings me to my first major issue with chemistry besides the complexity issue and the fact that it seems chemistry has not been challenged only expanded upon for 200+ years.
I understand that a mole is the "collection of Avogadro's number of objects." That's from my chemistry textbook. (We won't go into my rant about Avogadro's number today) Basically, the way I understand a mole is that it is one "unit" of whatever object that is there. Let's say I have sodium chloride (NaCl). It, in and of itself, is one mole, but it is also composed of one mole of Na and one mole of Cl. That being said, let's go back to the conservation of mass and how chemists compute weights of reactants and products.
Using the example of salt: NaCl we have a chemical formula of Na + Cl --> NaCl. One mole of Na + one mole of Cl produces one mole of sodium chloride. We all have that and understand that. Now, let's say that I have 39.0 grams of NaCl, how many grams of Na do I need to complete this reaction. Chemists at this stage would find out the molar mass of the 39.0 grams of NaCl and then multiply it by the ratio of the reactants in the formula.

39.0 grams NaCl (1 mol NaCl/ 49.45 grams)= 0.789 mol NaCl

0.789 mol NaCl (1 mol Na/1 mol NaCl)= 0.789 mol Na

0.789 mol Na (14.00 grams/ 1 mol Na)= 11.0 grams Na

If you were able to follow that, what it tells us is that we will need 11.0 grams (three significant figures [which we won't go into in this discussion]) of Na to make 39.0 grams NaCl. That was a pretty easy example.
Now, if the Law of Conservation of Mass is correct, we shouldn't need to convert to moles to figure out the weight of Na needed to get 39.0 g of NaCl. In theory, we should be able to use the percent of the weight Na takes up in NaCl.

NaCl (if atomic weights are correct) weighs approximately 49.45 g. Na weighs 14.00 g.

14.00 g Na/ 49.45 g NaCl= 28.3%

28.3% (39.0 g)= 11.0 g

Now wasn't that so much easier? I realize that this is a relatively simple example but it proves my point. Why do we need to convert everything to moles? Most students do not even understand what a mole is. It is difficult to visualize what a mole is and how it can be used.
I have yet to test this theory on molarities and volumes but I am pretty sure that it will work there. If you are a chemistry person, test it out and let me know how it goes.