Question

You’ve written several times that a person who reaches the conclusion that he should believe in another faith, or deny Judaism, is acting under compulsion and cannot be faulted for it; on the contrary, the will of the Creator of the world is that he should act according to his understanding and not according to the “real truth,” which is [according to Judaism] the observance of our Torah.
My question, then, is: how do you explain the passage about the inciter and enticer? Presumably, if he thinks one should worship other gods, he believes in it, and even persuades others of it—so why does the Torah give him such a severe punishment? Isn’t he supposed to act that way? And similarly with the wayward city, which the Torah calls an “abomination”—what exactly is the abomination if that is truly what they believe?
One could explain that all those who worshipped idolatry in the past were actually certain of the truth of the Torah and nevertheless acted and taught the opposite because of the evil inclination that took hold of them [that’s strained, since there were certainly some who became convinced of the correctness of another deity].
And according to this, the Enlighteners, for example, who persuaded the masses to leave religion, did nothing wrong, since they sincerely and honestly believed they were right.
I’d be glad to hear your opinion.