Reverend Jerry Falwell (quite possibly pictured at right with a friend), who holds sway over millions of Christians because his affair with Ted Haggard is not yet public, has made recent headlines by warning his followers that global warming is

“Satan’s attempt to redirect the church’s primary focus” from evangelism to environmentalism.

I’m skeptical. How would Jerry Falwell know what Satan is planning?

Last year Falwell acquired a sizable chunk of Satan’s shares in Hell in a crooked stock deal. Now the Prince of Darkness is worried about a hostile takeover, so he’s extremely tight-lipped around Falwell’s minions.

Nevertheless, Falwell does highlight an important point first made by Ann Coulter:

God gave us the earth. We have dominion over the plants, the animals, the trees. God said, “Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It’s yours.”

I made the Earth in less than 7 days. If you destroy it, I’ll just build you an other one and send Jesus down to carry all the True Believers to the new planet on a magic schoolbus. Sorry if I forgot to write part of that down in the Bible; it was a rush job and My publisher wanted an early start since it had to be handwritten for the first thousand years. Also, they didn’t know about schoolbuses yet.

Environmentalism is a petty distraction from the important things, like giving Me money and kissing My ass. Do you know how many ornate churches you could have built with the $2 billion wasted cleaning up the Exxon Valdez oil spill? Do you know how many thousands of people waste their weekends cleaning up roadsides and streams and seashores, when they could be knocking on doors at 8:00am shoving My book in peoples’ faces? Sometimes it feels like only Jehovah’s Witnesses really care about Me, but I know Jerry Falwell’s got My back too.

He has a history of statements about global warming which brilliantly integrate My new commandments. First, he applies the Pat Robertson commandment (evangelists are better than everyone else) to assert his authority over scientists:

I don’t believe in global warming in the first place, and I don’t believe we caused it, and I don’t think the science supports it.

Sure, the scientists think the science supports it, but most of them have PhDs from elite universities, where they presumably sip lattes in their ivory towers all day long, holding family meetings with chimpanzees instead of doing research. Falwell flunked out of the 44th best master’s-level university in the mid-Atlantic region in his sophomore year and went on to receive his bachelor’s degree in theology from an unaccreddited Bible college in Missouri. This allowed him to become an evangelist, which means he can authoritatively contradict smart people in their own areas of expertise because he has a direct line to My infinite wisdom.

Because Falwell’s education sheltered him from the temptation of reason, he is able to establish a conspiracy around global warming:

The fact is this whole thing is cyclical, and the scientists who are not on the payroll of the government to do these studies are saying the jury’s still out — there’s no such evidence there. But there are many who want to break the economic back of America by making us sign the Kyoto protocols while China, India, and half the world have said they would not do it.

This is a fantastic use of the Schlussel Commandment (thou shalt not research thine claims). If he had looked at some of the research suggesting humans cause climate change, he would have noticed that very few authors work for the federal government, and many work at universities in other countries or for privately funded institutions. Deftly sidestepping those facts, he proceeds from his faulty premise using even more faulty logic to suggest that scientists “on the payroll of the government” are conspiring “to break the economic back of America.” That’s right, they’re going to all this trouble just to dry up their own paychecks.

This inspires a new commandment, the Falwell Commandment:

Never let logic get in the way of a good point.

Some may question My decision to name this commandment after Falwell, arguing that Ann Coulter deserves the honor. But Ann Coulter is just a woman (as she would be the first to tell you). Falwell towers above her because people look to him for serious spiritual advice. Who else has the ear of the President tuned in to his pro-AIDS, anti-Constitution, anti-Semitic positions like these?

AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals. To oppose it would be like an Israelite jumping in the Red Sea to save one of Pharoah’s chariotters.

The idea that religion and politics don’t mix was invented by the Devil to keep Christians from running their own country.

I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way — all of them who have tried to secularize America — I point the finger in their face and say, “You helped this happen.” (By the way, by “this,” he means 9/11.)

The Jews are returning to their land of unbelief. They are spiritually blind and desperately in need of their Messiah and Savior.

This makes it even harder to believe that Falwell privy to a Satanic conspiracy to undermine Me, because his rhetorical skills will make him a powerful competitor of Satan’s when he arrives in hell. I suspect he is exaggerating for effect, and that he actually believes the conspiracy was hatched by homosexuals, not Satan. I can forgive Jerry Falwell’s dramatic license in light of his important message that the Earth is kind of like toilet paper: you’re supposed to smear shit all over it, then flush it and get a new roll.