Do you believe that icons and statues are idols and should be disposed of?
No, I believe that the Christian church has never had idols, and to claim otherwise is a violation of the canons of the Second Council of Nicaea. Furthermore, I believe that the use of iconography is required: at the barest minimum, every church should have a cross, but much more desirable are stained glass windows or painted icons depicting our Lord, and ideally also his mother the Theotokos and the Holy Apostles and other saints, and it is entirely proper to venerate these.
Now, concerning statues, I do not have a problem with these, but they are not venerated like icons, and I am not sure I would regard them in general as icons, with a few possible exceptions. For example, I love the three dimensional wooden sculptures of the Baby Jesus used in the Traditional Latin Mass from Christmas until a few weeks following, I think at least Epiphany (perhaps one of my Catholic friends such as
@Michie @chevyontheriver @concretecamper @Valletta would know). I myself, attending a TLM, saw a young girl asking about it and wanting to see it, and I realized what a superb means of evangelization that icon is.
The Roman Catholics also have another splendid icon in the form of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which is very interesting from an Orthodox perspective, because it generally complies with Orthodox iconographic principles (perhaps not in every detail, but to a very large extent), and that particular icon managed to, by its mere existence, convert the majority of the people of Mexico from their various heathen religions, particularly the barbaric human sacrifice religions such as those practiced by the Aztecs in Tenochitlan (now Mexico City), and in prior centuries by the Mayans in Yucatan, to Christianity.
The Eastern and Oriental Orthodox have some of the most splendid icons, including the sixth century icon of Christ Pantocrator at St. Catharine’s Monastery in Sinai, and other icons such as The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Extreme Humility, The Hospitality of Abraham, and so on.
These icons we know are not a new thing, for the Jewish synagogue in Dura Europos, and the early Christian house church in the same city, both had icons, until the islamic State destroyed them a few years ago. Scripture also contains several examples of iconography, for example, the cherubim that adorned the Ark of the Covenant.
When we consider the amount of Christian cultural heritage destroyed as a result of Iconoclasm, both by Muslims and by Iconoclastic Christians, since the eighth century, when iconoclasm spread to the Byzantine Empire as a result of superstitious military and political leaders who credited the military successes of the Ummayid Caliphate on its extreme iconoclasm rather than recognizing the faults in their own defensive strategies and the other contributing factors to the defeat of the Byzantine Empire in contested regions, for example, the alienation of the Oriental Orthodox Christians, and also the Jews and Samaritans, as a result of incredibly severe and violent persecution. Had the Coptic, Maronite and Syriac Christians at least not been persecuted, but had been respected and given a sense of participation in the Byzantine Empire, it could likely have repulsed the attacks on its provinces in Egypt, Syria, Judaea and Palestina.
Likewise, in the case of Mesopotamia, the Persian Empire was defeated because the ruling Sassanians failed to give the Assyrian and Chaldean people who lived in Mesopotamia a compelling reason to fight for them; Mesopotamia was ruled by the Sassanian Empire but it was not a true part of Persia.
