My father was a two-pack-a-day smoker until he was in his seventies. Then one day, in the Veterans’ Hospital where he went for health care, he saw a man smoking with the aid of a special machine that enabled him to smoke even though his lips had been eaten away by cancer caused by smoking. He saw the foolishness of smoking, and he believed it. He never smoked another cigarette. That is what belief does, though merely professed belief does not. Belief is when your whole being is set to act as if something is so.
