Lojban's imperfections?

[Christian Richard <cprchrd@mailserv.mta.ca>]

Hullo!

So far, I've only got a glance of some of the basics of Lojban.  Although
I see many interesting things, here are a few things with which I have
questions.
Some of these may sound like critics, and some of my assumptions might be
wrong, because I don't yet understand some parts of the language and am
still a beginner.
If any Lojbanist can try to answer these questions for me or tell me in
what way my understanding is wrong, it would be great.

1.  In Lojban, why is the first argument of a predicate put before that
predicate?  Is because it gives Lojban a more English-like
Subject-Verb-Object ordering in most cases?  And if so, why would you do
this if Lojban is supposed to be culturally neutral?  Shouldn't the
predicate be first, and then its arguments?  If the "first argument before
the predicate" idea wasn't to give Lojban a more English-like word order,
why was it done?

2. And why do you not use the real terms used in logic, such as
"predicate" or "argument", instead of your new Lojban words?  Are you
aware of the already available terms?

3. There seems to be much talk about the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis and how
Lojban can be a way to test it.  Exactly how is it intended to be tested?
Has there been any tests and results yet?  Or is this test of the
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis simply talk and no real thing done yet?

4. Lojban claims to be culturally neutral and unbiased because of its
artificial-ness.  However, as I understand it, its vocabulary was
developed to have maximum resemblance to words from some the world's most
popular languages.  How can this be artificial or culturally neutral?

5. Lojban seems to emphasise morphological and syntactic ambiguity, and
the language seems to try hard to be the less ambiguous possible.
However, Lojban allows the compounding of roots to form compound
words that by themselves could mean any number of things.  Is this
intentional?  Why is this allowed in a supposedly unambiguous language?

6.  To learn Lojban, I would have to master the order, number, and
semantics of arguments associated with each predicate.  I have noticed
that this dependency on order is also very much like the usual order in
English.  Are there again reasons why this order is not culturally neutral
and wasn't originally determined randomly instead of matching the natural
order the arguments would have in English?  Or is this a direct import
from the predicate calculus?

7. Is Lojban intended to be a language learnt and usable by humans?  If
so, how can it have such strict velency rules that depend only on physical
order for identifying the role of each argument.  Wouldn't this make
Lojban more of a computer language than a natural language?  A LISP
interpreter has no difficulty parsing a phrase consisting of a predicate
and seven arguments, dinstinguished only by physical order, for it can and
must do it consistently.  However, I think I would have more difficulty. I
could probably manipulate such a computer language, with paper and pencil,
or with text editors and compilers, but speaking such languages in real
time may be beyong my capabilities.
I would be interested in knowing how successful you were in having complex
conversations in Lojban during your annual Lojban-parties.
Is there anybody in the world fluent in Lojban, speaking fast and
naturally, just as an Anglophone speaks English?

Thanks!!
  Christian Richard