Essay Planning Guide
About
A guide to helping you plan your own essays, following our own ORR guide:
To make the most of this page, read the “how to” of each section, then go through the sample to see it in action
How-to video
The primary aim of your introduction is to establish the purpose of your essay: What it is arguing for.
This is why you begin the essay by stating your opinion. It’s the position that you aim to convince the reader of.
Having done this, you will want to give the reader a brief summary of why you – and they too – should agree with your opinion. These summaries are your reasons for believing your opinion. They are aimed at convincing someone to agree with your opinion.
Example
Q:
Is the Design Argument successful in proving the existence of God?
It seems clear to me that the design argument – as proposed by Paley – is completely unsuccessful in proving the existence of God.
This is because Hume’s criticisms of this argument – and the disanalogy criticism in particular – demonstrate beyond doubt that the Design Argument makes a clear mistake in reasoning.
Secondly, Paley’s design argument is clearly flawed because it draws on biological complexity and claims that it was either designed or originated by chance. This is not true. There is a third option: Evolution.
I will therefore argue that, due to Hume’s disanalogy criticism, and the issue posed by Evolution, the design argument is not successful in proving the existence of God.
Now we’ve got to the main body of the essay. You’ve already set out the reasons someone should believe your opinion. Now you need to explain why those reasons are correct.
Explain the argument for the reason in a convincing way. Use evaluative language.
Then examine a potential objection to your reason. But don’t leave it there, unanswered. Argue that the objection is wrong.
Then repeat the whole thing a second time.
Remember your evaluative language ...
Example
The Design Argument I will consider is the one proposed by William Paley in his book “Natural Theology”. Paley argues that biology must be designed because it is both complex and has a purpose (a telos). Paley’s test for design is developed by an analogy: Watches are complex and have a purpose, and are therefore more likely the result of design than chance. And biological things, such as eyes, also meet this test. For instance, an eye, just like a telescope, has many parts (cornea, lens etc.) that work together for a purpose (sight). And therefore, so Paley’s argument goes, biological things are designed. And just like watches and telescopes are designed by humans, so biology must be designed by God.
I, however, would argue that Paley’s argument is fundamentally wrong. This is because, as David Hume argues in the “Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion”, human-made things and natural things cannot be compared. This would mean that Paley cannot compare watches to eyes, and therefore the design argument is not successful in proving the existence of God.
Hume argues against 18th Century Design Arguments by claiming that the difference between man-made things and natural things is just too great to compare them. He argues, completely correctly, that we can only know that something is designed because we have seen many examples of that thing being designed. After many examples, he says, we can reason inductively that another instance of that thing is also designed.
However, says Hume, we don’t have lots of experiences of the natural world. We only have one. And so, our reasoning cannot apply to the natural world as it could to human-made things.
However, some modern supporters of the Design argument, like Richard Swinburne, argue that a test for design is not the same as an analogy. We can develop a test for design and then apply it to whatever we wish. And so, argues Swinburne, the Design Argument can escape Hume’s criticism.
Unfortunately, Swinburne’s argument is not at all convincing. Any test for design would only apply to things we can already observe, many times, to have had a cause. The natural world is not one of those things. And Hume’s criticism of the Design Argument must surely remain correct.
It seems extremely clear to me, therefore, that Hume’s is correct in asserting that man-made things and nature cannot be compared. And so surely, the design argument is not successful in proving the existence of God.
Now you’ve completed most of your essay, it’s time to come to a conclusion. You don’t want to say anything new here. You want to restate your argument.
Explain why the two reasons you have established in your essay prove your opinion.
Example
In conclusion, it seems clear now that the design argument has at least two fatal flaws. It attempts to compare human-made things to nature. And Hume shows us correctly that this is simply not possible. It also claims that there is no other explanation for the existence of biology outside of chance or God. The theory of Evolution demonstrates, again, that this is not true. And, so, due to these two flaws, we can only conclude that the design argument fails to prove the existence of God.
Download the resources
Upgrade to PRO!
Get a whole course in how to write your essay including:
- Tutorial videos
- Sample walkthroughs
- Knowledge-checking quizzes
All included in the Cogito Memberships bundle!
