First, it is important to note several things. This is an excerpt of a philosopher's article, and thus is not complete. In fact, this is only section V of a much larger work and thus could not in any way be considered fully worked out here. However, for instructional purposes, pretend it is a student paper, and consider whether it achieves the goals as such. Remember: students have to be more careful. Excellent writers can take liberties that would be disastrous for a student.
1. Has the author clearly stated a conclusion (a thesis)?
Yes, in the final paragraph of the excerpt. You, however, would want to craft an introduction that would include the conclusion you intend to demonstrate to your reader. Hume has probably put the conclusion of this section at the end for dramatic effect. Good for Hume; dangerous for an intro student.
2. Has the author clearly stated the premises that will establish his conclusion?
Not here. But you can easily reconstruct what the premises could be by carefully reading the first paragraph from the excerpt. Following is one way to reconstruct the premises of the argument:
(1) If the Argument From Design is an inductive argument by analogy, then it does not provide reason to believe in the traditional monotheistic God.
(2) The Argument From Design is an inductive argument by analogy.
Notice: although this is quite obvious from the first paragraph, the student would want to clearly state these premises.
3. Has the author clearly stated a version of the problem he is addressing?
Probably not for an intro student. The intro student would want to reproduce the original argument that is being criticized. The argument being criticized here basically goes as follows (summarized from Section II of Hume’s “Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion”):
Premise (1): The world is a great big complicated machine composed of smaller machines that all work together with purposeful adaptation of means to ends.
Premise (2): This machine remarkably resembles productions of human design, say, machines like watches and ships.
Premise (3): Similar effects usually have similar causes.
Conclusion: Probably the world was designed by a being possessing intelligence analogous to human intelligence, though unfathomably greater (we are to understand that this being in the Judeo-Christian God).
4. Has the author clarified any terms and justified his premises?
The author has alluded to the rules of inference governing an argument by analogy. Implicit in that is the claim that the argument he is criticizing is an analogy, and this is premise (2). The student would want to justify this claim further, maybe by citing authoritative sources that clearly define an argument by analogy, as well as the rules of inference governing such an argument.
The author justifies accepting premise (1) throughout the rest of the excerpt. Premise (1) is a conditional (a statement of the form “if…then…”). Given the antecedent of the conditional (the part preceded by the word ‘if’), each “consequence” the author argues for further supports the consequent of the conditional (the part preceded by the word ‘then’). He does this by showing that the important attributes we normally ascribe to the Judeo-Christian God cannot be inferred from the analogy.
5. Has the author considered objections to his arguments?
Yes. Though the objection is not reprinted her, nor is his response.
6. Has the author established his conclusion through careful reasoning?
Yes. At each point made, the author justifies why that attribute ascribed to God cannot, with any degree of probability worth considering, be inferred to the designer of the universe, if even there is one, given the argument as it stands. Once he has demonstrated that crucial aspects ascribed to God cannot be fairly inferred from the argument as stated, then the conclusion follows readily.
Notice: the conclusion is NOT that God does not exist; rather, the conclusion is that the argument under consideration gives no strong reason to believe that anything like the Judeo-Christian God does exist. That is, the conclusion is that the criticized argument fails to establish the desired conclusion.
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