I think it's fair to say that "the English alphabet doesn't represent sounds" when you're comparing it to other languages where one character represents one sound, period. Is it a perfect sentence that covers every single point and detail? No, but it's enough to understand what is meant. And if we're nitpicking, I could say that no one in the world has learned to read English perfectly solely from phonics and so you're not being fair in saying that you "learned how to read from phonics and I know millions of others have as well". Because we have plenty of words that completely ignore phonics that you would be reading incorrectly. Even if we didn't have those, you still need additional information to know which sound is being used in a specific word. (Read or read?)

It essentially boils down to having to memorize how a lot of words are pronounced.