Well, very good for you! Both my Dad and Mom quit cigarettes by simple choice and will - although in his forties he smoked a pipe, and Mom,in her eighties with some form of dementia would ask for a cigarette once in a while when in the Nursing Home. My story was different, as I have written. I had no desire to quit. Even though I thought of smoking as a "sin," I didn't realize the harm it causes. That is what Biblical sin is: doing harm to oneself or to others. God wants to remove that dynamic.

The Bible says that if you claim you have no sin in your life, that is, if you claim to have no hurtful things in your life, done to you or which you have done to others, you are just deceiving yourself. Jesus has taken hurt and harm out of my life. I know that might not mean anything to you because of your stated religion of atheism. I lived 20 odd years before I turned to God and another couple years before I asked Jesus into my life.

As in the Hebrew text 11:1, "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen," which, in my life experience, meant that faith is not some mystical ether, a pipedream, or wishful thinking. Rather, it has substance and is evidential. It has an effect and is to be realized in one's living life. It is solid ground we can walk on. Not for nothing.

Thanks for responding and I hope you choose to understand what I am saying. I enjoy conversation