If you're only talking about real time animation or games, I agree. (I recognize that you mentioned pov-ray)
However, the world of 3d graphics does not stop at quake. many software packages must render accurately. OpenGL is about speed, not accuracy.
so nerdyneo, you can just set pixels on a bitmap in memory and then display that bitmap on the screen when you're done. That's how rendering should be done. But yes, you'll have to know quite a lot about 3d math, texture mapping, shading, lighting, etc...
