Last week in Britain, Dennis and Flora Milner, “a happy and contented elderly couple,” committed suicide.  According to the U.K. daily The Telegraph, the couple took this drastic measure because they did not want to lose their independence or become a burden to others.  The article frames the Milners as a sweet, thoughtful pair who modeled for the rest of us what unselfish people do when they are no longer “useful.”

Their son reinforced the point:  “We loved our parents.  However we are pleased they were able to commit suicide the way they wanted to and in the way they wished,” he said.  “They wanted to make a political point.  Their big wish was everyone should be able to do what they did, in their own home and own country.”

Tellingly, the last book they read was atheist Richard Dawkins’ The Greatest Show on Earth.  How fitting.  Dawkins, “Darwin’s P.T. Barnum,” has been busy promoting himself—er, I mean, his book—via every available media outlet for the past couple of months.  In an interview on Irish television in September 2009, Dawkins said that he would like to die under a general anesthetic the way a dog is put down by the vet. (At the 6:15 mark in this video)

Did the Milners see this interview?  Possibly, but it would have hardly been necessary.  The Milners were lifelong communist activists and atheists.  Their decision to kill themselves was not made after a prolonged illness or as a result of dementia.  Rather, the Milners simply took their macabre worldview to its logical conclusion.  Their communist convictions and the writings of Richard Dawkins—I know, sometimes it is difficult to distinguish one from the other—merely served to reinforce the philosophy to which they had long been committed.

Atheists like Dawkins often speak of “the glory of life” in the evolutionary model, but this is just so much whistling through the graveyard.  Instead of glorying in life, the worldview necessarily leads to a devaluation of it.  It cannot do otherwise.  It is evident in Dawkins’ remark on Irish television; in the Milners’ suicides; and in the hundreds of millions murdered by atheistic regimes around the world.

And lest you think the Milners’ communism incidental to the story, let me assure you that it is not.  According to Marxist theory, communism is the highest stage of socialism, and socialism in any form is atheism masquerading as political theory.  All good communists are, by definition, atheists.

“I think that a man should not live beyond the age when he begins to deteriorate, when the flame that lighted the brightest moment of his life has weakened.”  Thus concluded a much younger Fidel Castro.  Of course, now that his flame is but a flicker, it seems that he lacks the courage of his former convictions.  It remains to be seen what Dawkins, who is now 67, will do.

What a bankrupt worldview!  According to the Bible, man has innate value because he is made in the image of God.  In Western civilization, this doctrine has provided the basic framework for our treatment of other human beings.  It has given rise to human freedoms ranging from the Declaration of Independence to the Geneva Convention.  Where will we be should the atheist vision become the dominant one?  The question is rhetorical, not speculative.  Sadly, we have many examples of societies that have done just that, and none are places to which Richard Dawkins would want to retire.