Ok, then, it’s not that it’s a statue (or man made likeness), not the bowing in front of, nor the praying in front of that makes an idol an idol.
Can you please try to define precisely what makes an idol an idol now? Nothing extraneous to the determining factors, only what it is that makes it an idol?
This says it quite well I think....verses follow.....
In Hebrew the word for Idols is Elim , avodot zerah means foreign worship......... The Hebrew word for idolatry means to bow down or genuflect is to worship... Tishtacheweh.
..... To bow down or genuflect as an act of worship....shachah (shaw-khaw’);a primitive root; to depress, prostrate, especially reflexive, in homage to royalty or God, bow (self) down, crouch, fall down (flat), humbly beseech, do (make) obeisance, do reverence, make to stoop, worship.
Further scripture....supporting not to do this...
Deut. 4:16... “that you do not become corrupt and make for yourselves an idol, an image of any shape, whether formed like a man or a woman” (NIV).
“Ye shall make you no idols nor graven image.. to bow down unto it.... Cursed be the man that maketh any graven or molten image, an abomination unto the Lord” (Leviticus 26:1; Deuteronomy 27:15).