Where are the modern day idols?

In the Old Testament idols were a big deal--two of the ten commandments are taken up with prohibitions against them. Not many people in Europe, or the Americas seem to be worshiping Baal at stone altars or wooden Asherah these days. However in a recent trip to China I saw a lot of people offering incense and bowing down to various Buddhas and other idol like figurines. I have seen similar stuff in Japan. Are these just the fading pockets of idol worshiop? Will this be mostly gone in 50 years? So what are the 21st century idols? Have idols morphed into something else, or are they a vice man has mostly left behind--perhaps the only one? Conventional wisdom says that our material things (e.g. Plasma TVs) are modern day idols--but this is not compelling to me. People typically don't worship these things or pray to them--they just want them for status or to immerse themselves in a football game. Have we elevated science to god status now? Looking to it for protection and for answers to the mysteries of life.

After Saul botched his assignment to wipe out the Amalekites Samuel tells him:"For rebellion is as the sin of divination, And insubordination is as iniquity and idolatry" This equates idolatry with disobeying God -- essentially putting yourself in the position of God.

Mike Thorburn Bayside said that anything that comes between you and God is an idol. This approach would promote a lot of things to idol status--in fact almost everything sinful or evil. This strikes me as perhaps too broad--but this would fit with the emphasis given in the Ten Commandments.

Scot Douglass in his book, Theology of the Gap says: "Diastema and Kinesis are antidotes to humanity's propensity to idolatry. The very fabric of creation speaks of the absence of God and invites those within the diasteme to seek for God elsewhere".

Yes, I agree it is arguable whether this last quote is actually in English. My paraphrase of Scot's sentences above is that life is the juxtaposition of "now" -the moment that we live in, and the untouchable past and future. If we recognize the mystery of that, then we are far less likely to seek god in a wooden statue wrapped in gold foil.

Man would create God, but would God create Man?

(Meditation in Progress) I am certain that man would create God if there were no God. I am less certain that God would create man if there were no man. Given that man seems to exist, the question centers on "is there really a God?" There are many men, and hence many religions. I suppose there could be more than one true path, but Jesus discourages that alternative ("No man comes to the Father but through me")

Is Christianity really unique in its historical basis? A religion where at least some of its history is verifiable distinguishes itself from myth, and from most other religions. Many religions with no verifiable history(e.g. Mormons) have a sort of made-up feel to them. The historical veracity of Christianity certainly doesn't hurt its believability, but the path to faith doesn't usually follow an archeologist's steps.

The ongoing friction between Christianity and Science is a serious thing. I suppose it hasn't always been this way. Until science reached a certain level of maturity I doubt its explanations were any more compelling than just chalking things up to God's will. However once science achieved some predictive capability (e.g. timing of eclipses) things started to change. Over and over the church has opposed new scientific ideas (e.g. heliocentric solar system), only to eventually abandon their position in the face of compelling evidence. Why is there this historical animosity? The church has been lagging science ever since the 1st century. Will this gap ever close?