On images being bad

At this point my rationale is about images as a means of communication. My personal belief is that images are a completely valid and powerful medium, and in my rationale I am presenting opposing views--in addition to those in support of my position--as proof that images are powerful enough to generate fear in the form of opposition.

Gilgamesh
The Bible decries that man should not create, look at, worship, or have anything to do with images, sculpture or any representational art form. However, in The Epic of Gilgamesh (which predates the Bible by 500+ years) Gilgamesh himself creates images and representations of his deceased friend, Enkidu. He encourages his people to do the same and calls upon all the artisans in the city. There are two main differences between this instance of creating images and those that occur in the Bible. First, the images are created in hommage of a deceased man, not in reverence of a false god. Second, Gilgamesh himself is 2/3 god and 1/3 man, so though the Sumerians, Akkadians and Babylonians were all polytheistic it goes along with the Bible's point that only God (or in this case, a god) can create...anything.

Baudrillard
He states more eloquently my interpretation of the bible. "(The iconoclasts') rage to destroy images arose precisely because they sensed this omnipotence of simulacra, this facility they have of effacing God from the consciousness of men, and the overwhelming, destructive truth which they suggest: that ultimately there has never been any God, that only the simulacrum exists, indeed that God himself has only ever been his own simulacrum."

According to Baudrillard, images are only a simulation of the real thing, yet he asserts that "the divinity that breathes life into nature" can be represented. The problem with the representation of God lay in the fact that there is no "real" version present with which we can compare the image. See, if someone paints or photographs a chair, you know that it is a photograph or a painting of a chair which actually exists because you've seen one. You also know the difference between the real thing, a painting and a photograph. This is troublesome when it comes to God for obvious reasons.