Euthanizing Toads and God

The extremely controversial topic of euthanization is commented on a couple of times in His Dark Materials, first for a toad and then for God, which seemed a bit blasphemous.
" 'It would be merciful to kill it,' said Tialys.
'How do you know?' said Lyra. 'It might still like being alive, in spite of everything.'
'If we killed it, we'd be taking it with us,' said Will. 'It wants to stay here. I've killed enough living things. Even a filthy stagnant pool might be better than being dead.'
'But if it's in pain?' said Tialys.
'If it could tell us, we'd know. But since it can't, I'm not going to kill it. That would be considering our feelings rather than the toad's.' They moved on" (752).
Like Dr. Sexson said, some themes are too important and deep to be in adult literature. Philosophizing about death and suffering, Lyra and Will don't want to kill the toad, even though Tialys makes the point that putting it out of its misery would be the more compassionate thing to do. Regardless of the debate, however, no action is ultimately taken because they have no way of knowing for sure what the toad prefers, since it cannot talk. Similarly, euthanization is different depending on whether the patient is capable of communicating. Clearly, a person who is dying from a terminal illness like Huntington's Disease, for example, would be more moral to euthanize than someone in a coma who cannot speak for themselves (as for as I'm concerned, that also goes for fetuses).
The second example of euthanasia is when Mrs. Coulter is talking to Father MacPhail. She says, "Well, where is God...if he's alive? And why doesn't he speak anymore? At the beginning of the world, God walked in the Garden and spoke with Adam and Eve. Then he began to withdraw, and he forbade Moses to look at his face. Later, in the time of Daniel, he was aged-- he was the Ancient of Days. Where is he now? Is he still alive, at some inconceivable age, decrepit and demented, unable to think or act or speak and unable to die, a rotten hulk? And if that is his condition, wouldn't it be the most merciful thing, the truest proof of our love for God, to seek him out and give him the gift of death" (789)? This passage really stuck me. Mrs. Coulter is talking about euthanizing God to a priest. That is about as ironic as it gets, although in God's case, it is a metaphor on Pullman's part, to discard all the junk of conventional religion that seems to accompany it these days. As an atheist, Pullman would like to see Christianity stripped of all its superficial bullshit, to put it bluntly. (If you want to learn more about euthanasia, you can go to www.euthanasia.com.)