When a headline at FOX News’ website reads, “I was a committed atheist and then this incredible thing happened to me,” two thoughts should go through your mind:

1) Of course FOX considers this news.

2) What the hell is this “incredible thing” that happened?

If the writer has evidence for God’s existence, I’m all ears!… Unfortunately, Lenya Heitzig‘s reasoning is exactly what you’d expect.

The story begins as so many Christian apologists’ stories do: With an atheist father who was derelict in his duties, a college experience that involved sex and drugs, and a whole lot of anger.

Heitzig was especially furious when her atheist father “had a born-again experience” after reading the Bible, seeing the words of Jesus in red, and realizing that He said a lot of good things. (This is news to nobody, by the way.)

… His newfound faith threatened me. Outwardly, I wildly mocked him. Inwardly, his reversal of worldviews launched me on a quest to discover the meaning of life.

Uh-huh. I have no clue why someone else’s faith — based on the discovery of the obvious — would threaten your own rationality, but then we get to the Big Revelation. What finally caused Heitzig to have a change of heart?

It started with a Billy Graham book she picked up at a bookstore…

Something I read in chapter 3, “Does God Really Speak to Us,?” chafed against my scientific belief in evolution. Billy proposed that God is a Creator who speaks through nature, whether in a crying infant or the song of a bird. “Yeah, right,” I blurted out. I arrogantly put God to a challenge and inadvertently offered my first prayer: “God, if You rule over nature, if You’re sovereign even over the instincts of a bird, then make that bird chirping in the distance fly into the tree next to my blanket.” Fluttering toward me, the small grey swallow lit upon the branch above my head. Closing the book superstitiously, I thought, Maybe God does exist and created me for a purpose.

… what?

A bird flying in your vicinity is not a miracle. It’s not a sign. It’s not God’s way of communicating with you. It’s just what birds do.

If your atheism is so weak that a flying bird convinces you Jesus rose from the dead, then you were probably more apathetic than anything. That’s not surprising from someone who called herself an atheist simply because it’s what her father was.

And what the hell does any of that have to do with evolution? Nothing in that paragraph disproves it. Does Heitzig even understand the topic?

Without any more elaboration, she cuts right to the end of the story:

I was transformed from tending bar on the weekends to marrying a pastor who tells people every Sunday about the living water that satisfies our deep thirst for more. Who would believe that a bird and a Bible would one day lead us to becoming friends with Billy Graham and his family?…

So she went from being an irrational atheist to a irrational believer. Then she married another believer. And now they both share stories that make no sense to anybody who dares to actually think about what they’re saying.

Are you convinced? Have you converted?

(Image via Shutterstock)

