Why do Orthodox Christians kiss and bow to icons?

What conversations like this show is a prejudice against the position the church has historically taken, with no historical understanding that these positions have been in place for the last 2,000 years. This is not something the Orthodox came up with in the modern day. We have loads of examples of early catacomb churches that we have unearthed that have icons on the wall.

That's a reality. In the Old Testament, we have the tabernacle with the angels on top of it. Just because you don't like iconography does not mean that iconography does not have historical precedence. And this is the problem: people remain in ignorance because they have a prejudice, not because they are educated. George has a natural inclination to the holiness of the Bible, which I agree with; I wouldn't put the Bible on the ground either.

But then he has an inclination against what we believe to be holy, because he's not familiar with it, and so he writes it off and is very dismissive and smug about it.