I understand that the pace of your download depends on the number of peers and seeds, right?  So my downloading is running way slow and assume it's because there are very few peers connected (plenty of seeds though), but this seems to be the issue with any torrent I try to download.  So what's the deal here... how do I go about getting more peers connected so I can actually download a torrent?  I'm new on this site trying to understand it but it's a bit complicated.  Help Please?

Does your service provider restrict BitTorrent traffic maybe?  Run a speed test on a site like speedtest to at least see what your connection is capable of.

Sounds like ISP shaping.
Search glasnost. I would give you a link but then the post is held for review. They test specifically for ISP shaping, they will tell you and it is free.

no, the rate of downloading is not controlled merely by the number of seeds/peers that are potential sources.

There is no single, simple answer or fix.

Some are internal, local to your computer and under your control.
Others are controlled by the middlemen, your ISP, its uplinks, the seeds/sources ISP etc.
Finally the resources of the seeds/sources and their system configuration comes into play.

You can have 1 seed feed you faster than say 10 seeds on another torrent.

You can't force others to connect and you can't control their configuration settings.

Best you can do is configure your computer and all interconnected local devices (router/switch/modem) properly for torrents, hope your ISP is helpful not hindering.  Also know that torrent is inherently designed to reward sharing/uploading. The more willing you are to commit upload bandwidth from your system, others are signaled to send you more/faster etc. That is IF they are capable of it. Not everyone has a huge upload capacity.