Question

Hello Rabbi, in a lecture I heard, the Rabbi argued that secular Jews, or at least some of them who do not believe they are obligated by the Torah, their commandments are not commandments and their transgressions are not transgressions. At the beginning of the lecture, the Rabbi raised the example of one who worships idolatry and quoted Maimonides, who exempts the worshiper if he worshiped out of love or fear, and holds him liable only if he accepted it upon himself as a god. Maimonides, at the beginning of the laws of idolatry, describes the root of idolatry in the days of Enosh, when people worshiped the stars and so on, but not by accepting them as gods; rather, out of the recognition that the Holy One, blessed be He, rules over them, only that He granted them honor and therefore they are worthy of honor from us. In chapter two he continues and says that the essence of the commandment is not to worship, even though the worshiper knows that the Lord is God, etc. All these statements seem, at first glance, to contradict the Rabbi’s understanding. It does not sound as though Maimonides requires accepting something as a god in order to violate the commandment according to these statements, and it could be that the accepting as a god that he mentions is different from how the Rabbi understood it. I would be glad for an explanation. Thank you very much.