wireless authentication

I'm new to wireless networks and the reason why is because I see a real lack of true security in the technology. Though many improvements have been introduced and realized, there still seems to be acknowledged security holes in wireless networks by most professionals in the industry. The MAC address filtering I thought or appeared to be the best way of locking out hackers from access to an AP. But I've learned in this past week that MAC filtering provides little or no security according to most. So why isn't something similar to MAC filtering used? Instead of filtering why not have an authentication method involved there. In such a way where the MAC address or something like it doesn't get passed between the client(s) and host AP. And make this authentication a one time thing where something like a encrypted code is generated from the AP and passed to the client. Sort of in the way product license keys works in software.