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Why do Children Die of Cancer?

Filed with 60.11 Religion · Related: 60.9 Philosophy · Political Philosophy (MOC)

Here’s the big picture: the challenge “Why do children get cancer?” is a vivid, modern framing of an ancient problem—the problem of evil—aimed especially at religions that claim God is perfectly good, all-knowing, and all-powerful. Pediatric cancer is invoked because it concentrates the force of the challenge: the sufferers are innocent; the suffering is intense and often prolonged; and the causes are natural (mutations), not human choices. That makes it a paradigm case of what philosophers call “natural evil.”

1) Where the question comes from (intellectual lineage)

Antiquity (the root problem).

  • The core triad goes back at least to the Epicurean tradition: if God is willing to prevent evil but not able, He is not omnipotent; able but not willing, not good; both able and willing, why is there evil? The pediatric example isn’t used in antiquity, but the structure of the objection is the same.
    Early Christian and medieval replies (first theodicies).
  • Augustine (evil as privation; moral evil from disordered will; natural evils linked to a fallen creation).
  • Irenaeus/“soul-making” themes later developed into a view that harsh features of the world can cultivate virtue and maturity.
    Early modern flashpoints.
  • Leibniz argues this is the “best of all possible worlds,” where apparent evils serve wider goods.
  • Bayle and Hume press the counterpoint: observation favors no such harmony; Hume’s Dialogues sharpen the argument from suffering.
  • Voltaire (after the 1755 Lisbon earthquake) satirizes optimistic theodicies: mass suffering from natural causes is hard to square with providence.
    19th–20th century moral focus on innocent suffering.
  • Dostoevsky’s Ivan Karamazov centers on tortured children as the starkest rebuttal to tidy theodicies.
  • In analytic philosophy, the debate splits into:
    • Logical problem of evil (can God and evil even coexist without contradiction?).
    • Evidential problem of evil (even if coexistence is possible, how probable is God given seemingly gratuitous suffering?).
      Late 20th century—evidential turn and “natural evil.”
  • Alvin Plantinga resolves the logical problem for many by showing God and evil are not formally incompatible.
  • William Rowe reframes the debate: cases like a fawn dying painfully in a forest fire (or a child with cancer) are evidence against a perfectly good, omnipotent God because they look “pointless.” Pediatric cancer becomes a go-to example in this evidential style of argument.
  • Marilyn McCord Adams argues that “horrendous evils” (often involving children) pose a special challenge to the rationality and morality of faith.
    21st-century public discourse (the exact phrasing gets popularized).
  • Public advocates of atheism and secular humanism—Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris—use child suffering to challenge the goodness or existence of God.
  • The specific phrasing crystallizes in media moments such as Stephen Fry’s 2015 interview (“bone cancer in children”) which spread widely and cemented this as the layperson’s archetypal question.

2) Why this example (children with cancer) is used

  • Moral salience: children are maximally “innocent,” stripping away free-will defenses aimed at moral evil.
  • Natural causation: pediatric cancers stem from mutations (replication errors, inherited variants, developmental mishaps), not choices—so they’re squarely “natural evil.”
  • Intensity and opacity: extreme pain, fear, and loss with no obvious pathway to compensating goods we can see.
  • Rhetorical clarity: it short-circuits abstract debate by focusing on a case most people find morally urgent.

3) Who propagates the question (and why)

a) Philosophers of religion (critics of theism).

  • From Hume to Rowe to contemporary evidentialists (e.g., Paul Draper), the example serves as a clean test of whether purported goods (free will, soul-making, natural laws) plausibly justify this kind of suffering.
    b) Public intellectuals and media figures.
  • Stephen Fry’s “bone cancer in children” clip is the most famous; the “new atheist” wave echoed the theme to challenge classical theism in popular venues.
    c) Secular clinicians and scientists (occasionally).
  • Not as a polemic, but as a human reaction: physicians, researchers, and science communicators sometimes cite pediatric oncology to illustrate that suffering is built into biological processes (mutation, selection), which some take to undercut benevolent design.
    d) Religious insiders (existential protest).
  • The question isn’t only external. Believers, pastors, and theologians also ask it—sometimes in lament (“How long, O Lord?”) rather than as a knock-down argument—forcing their own traditions to wrestle with theodicy.

4) How major traditions respond (very briefly)

  • Free-will + stable natural order: For a world where actions have reliable consequences, nature must run by stable laws. Those laws allow for mutation and disease as the cost of overall order and freedom.
  • Soul-making (Irenaean/Hick): Some evils are arenas for developing courage, compassion, and solidarity; goods that presuppose risk.
  • Augustinian “privation” + cosmic fall: Natural disorder (including disease) results from a metaphysical rupture in creation; redemption is historical and eschatological, not merely present.
  • Skeptical theism: Our cognitive limits mean we shouldn’t expect to see God’s justifying reasons, even if they exist.
  • Christocentric/participatory theodicies: God suffers with creatures and promises ultimate restoration; the response is less an explanation than a pattern of redemptive participation (care for the sick, medical work, palliative love).
  • Evolutionary theodicies: If God creates through evolution, the same freedom-for-novelty that yields rational animals also entails vulnerability to malfunction (cancer is the dark twin of cell growth and repair).
    None of these dissolves the sting of the question; each tries to show why a good God might allow a world where pediatric cancer occurs.

5) Why the question persists

  • It’s philosophically resilient: even when the logical problem is addressed, the evidential and existential force remains.
  • It tracks new knowledge: advances in genetics and oncology highlight randomness and developmental error, reinforcing the “natural evil” category.
  • It’s ethically clarifying: it keeps the debate grounded in real human suffering, not abstractions.
  • It’s symmetric: both critics and believers use it—critics to challenge, believers to deepen lament, action, and hope.

Further reading (plain-text links)

Atheist vs Christian vs Spiritual Thinker Is Not Believing In God Causing More Harm Than Good?!

Quote

I would ask you to consider what you find more likely if we assume that we are essentially existing here as accidental organisms just competing in a struggle for survival with no endowed meaning or supervision. What might we expect to find? And I would ask what you would expect to find if we were created with purpose by a loving God who wants us all to come into communion with him, but for some reason thinks it’s necessary that we exist in this veil of tears in this material world first. What would you expect to find?

I don’t think—and then look at what you do find. Look at what you do find in the natural world. Even if you just take into consideration nonhuman animal suffering—just an unfathomable amount of negative experience, right? There’s seemingly no reason. Not to mention the fact that children are getting cancer, as you say, and as you’ve already alluded to, there are evils that humans commit, like the Holocaust. But there are evils which they don’t, like earthquakes and tsunamis and the like. I don’t think we would expect to see any of this if we assume that hypothesis. But if we assume that we are just accidentally existing organisms in a struggle for survival, not only do we explain this, but we also come to expect it. So I think it provides a much better explanation.

That is not to say justification. The idea we were talking about was evolution. You said that the problem that you have with the Darwinian worldview is that it seems to favor survival of the fittest. And yet there are things which evolution seems to point to that we would morally condemn. Well, of course, because evolution by natural selection is an explanation for how things got the way they were. It’s in no way a justification for behaviors. It doesn’t even function that way. No scientific theory of why things happen is any kind of justification—any more than Newton’s laws of gravity are a moral justification for the motion of the planets. Of course that’s not the case. It’s just an explanation. But I just really want to drive home this point. It has to do more. If you want religious traditions to do what you claim that they do, which is provide existential comfort for people who are suffering, you have to do more in the face of children dying of cancer than some reference to mythical human beings who existed in a way that’s completely unintelligible.
-Alex O’Connor

Counter-Arguments from Religion

1. Free Will and Lawful Order (Augustinian + Modernized)

Core idea:
Evil and suffering result from the necessary conditions of a stable, law-governed world and the misuse of free will within it.
Even “natural” evils like cancer arise from the same biological and physical regularities that make moral agency, growth, and scientific discovery possible.
Key points

  • For free agents to act meaningfully, the world must behave predictably. Stable physics allows both healing and harm.
  • A system of regular natural law unavoidably permits side effects — earthquakes, genetic mutations, and disease.
  • God’s choice was between a world of meaningful order (where evil is possible) or chaos (where virtue and love are meaningless).
    Criticism answered: “Why children?”
    → Their suffering isn’t willed individually but permitted within a world whose lawful structure allows free will and moral significance.
    Philosophers/Theologians: Augustine, Alvin Plantinga, Richard Swinburne.

2. Soul-Making (Irenaean / John Hick)

Core idea:
Suffering, including that of children, can contribute to the moral and spiritual growth of humanity collectively.
Life is a “vale of soul-making,” a training ground rather than a finished paradise.
Application to children:

  • Their suffering evokes compassion, solidarity, self-sacrifice, and love in others — virtues that could not develop in a painless world.
  • Even if the individual child cannot “grow,” the community does, and ultimate justice may be fulfilled in an afterlife.
    Philosophers/Theologians: Irenaeus, John Hick, Marilyn McCord Adams (in refined form).

3. Eschatological or Redemptive Hope

Core idea:
Earthly suffering is not the final word. A perfectly good God can allow temporary suffering if it is ultimately redeemed and healed in eternity.
Analogy:
A surgeon’s painful operation can be justified by the greater good of healing. On a cosmic scale, all pain may be transformed.
Counter-force:
This shifts the debate from logical explanation to trust in eventual justice, often seen in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.
Representative voices: C.S. Lewis (The Problem of Pain), Pope John Paul II (Salvifici Doloris), many contemporary theologians.

4. The Evolutionary / Natural Law Defense

Core idea:
In a universe where life evolves by genetic variation and natural selection, disease is inseparable from the very mechanisms that make complex life possible.
Applied to cancer:

  • Cancer is a consequence of cell reproduction and mutation — the same processes that allow growth, healing, and adaptation.
  • If God creates through evolution, He allows a system that produces both beauty and tragedy as the cost of freedom in nature.
    Notable defenders: John Polkinghorne, Kenneth Miller, Elizabeth Johnson.

5. Skeptical Theism

Core idea:
Our cognitive limitations make it unreasonable to expect we could grasp God’s reasons for every instance of suffering.
Analogy:
A toddler cannot see why a vaccine hurts now but protects later; likewise, finite humans can’t expect to see cosmic purposes.
Strengths:
Avoids claiming specific “reasons” for every evil, preserving humility before mystery.
Weakness:
Critics argue it risks undermining moral reasoning (“if we can’t judge, how can we call anything evil?”).
Philosophers: Stephen Wykstra, Michael Bergmann, Daniel Howard-Snyder.

6. Participation / The Cross as Theodicy

Core idea:
God is not detached from suffering but enters into it. The Christian claim that God suffered in Christ reframes the question: not “Why does God allow this?” but “What has God done about it?”
Implication:
The ultimate divine act is solidarity with victims — including sick children — rather than prevention of all pain.
Representative thinkers: Jürgen Moltmann (The Crucified God), N.T. Wright.

7. Existential and Practical Theodicy

Core idea:
Faith’s power is not in solving the riddle but in empowering action — medicine, charity, hospice care.
The meaningful response is compassion, not speculation.
Modern turn:
Post-Holocaust theology and process theology move toward partnership: God suffers with creation and works _through_us to heal it.

8. Moral Evil vs. Natural Evil Distinction (and Its Limits)

Defense: Natural evil (like cancer) is not punishment but the byproduct of physical law.
Extension: The same predictable physics that allows airplanes and agriculture also allows accidents and disease.
Limit: Critics note that this explains how suffering happens, not why an omnipotent God couldn’t prevent the worst cases.

9. Counter-arguments to the Critic’s Framing Itself

  1. Moral presupposition paradox:
    To call suffering “evil” presupposes an objective moral standard; atheistic critiques must borrow moral language they can’t ground metaphysically.
  2. Category mistake:
    The question “Why does God allow X?” assumes divine action should resemble human micromanagement. Classical theism sees God as sustaining reality, not intervening arbitrarily.
  3. Epistemic humility:
    Demanding a humanly satisfying explanation assumes omniscient perspective; that expectation may be misplaced.
  4. Psychological vs. logical force:
    The child-cancer example is emotionally powerful but not logically decisive. Plantinga’s free-will defense shows no logical contradiction exists between God and evil.

10. Summary Table

Counter-ArgumentCore ClaimPrimary StrengthMain Criticism
Free Will + Natural LawEvil permitted by stable laws enabling freedomExplains systemic necessityDoesn’t soothe the emotional weight
Soul-MakingSuffering develops virtueGives moral meaning to adversityHard to justify infant suffering directly
Eschatological HopeFuture redemption justifies temporary painPreserves divine goodnessDepends on afterlife belief
Evolutionary TheodicyLife’s mechanisms entail diseaseScientifically coherentMakes evil seem “baked in”
Skeptical TheismWe can’t expect to see God’s reasonsHumble, avoids arroganceRisks moral paralysis
Participatory TheodicyGod suffers with usProvides emotional comfortDoesn’t “explain” evil logically
Moral Grounding CounterCritics rely on borrowed moralityDefends moral realism of theismDebatable for secular ethics

Would you like me to expand this into a debate-ready version, with sample atheist challenges and the corresponding religious or philosophical replies (each in short, quotable paragraphs)? That version is useful for writing, debate, or apologetic study.