Be careful with "shotgun" and "rapid-fire" arguments

Oftentimes when a skeptic has a discussion with someone, not even necessarily a Christian / religious person, but also for example with a conspiracy theorist, that other person may engage in "shotgun argumentation" and "rapid-fire argumentation", and this is something that many skeptics fail to stop, even though they really should.

"Shotgun argumentation" is when tons and tons of tiny claims are presented all at once, in rapid succession, defending or attacking some position. There are two main reasons for such a tactic:

1. Just the sheer amount of arguments may make the claims more credible. After all, if only two or three arguments are presented, then that might not convince many people, but present twenty or thirty, and suddenly you have a much weightier argument! After all, there's an "overwhelming amount" of arguments and "evidence" for the position, so clearly there's something legit going on.
2. The other distinct advantage of this tactic is that when you present dozens and dozens of arguments, the chances that the skeptic will not have a proper answer to at least one of them increases dramatically. Thus, you can present argument after argument after argument, rapidly moving from one to the next (ie. "rapid-fire argumentation"), and immediately when you arrive at one that the skeptic has no immediate good answer for you can immediately jump to the opportunity: "See? You have no answer! I win!"

When skeptics engage in conversation with such religious people or conspiracy theorists, they should really stop that kind of argumentation on its tracks.

If the other person just starts making argument after argument after argument in quick succession, by the third or fourth one, when it has become clear that he is just going to spout a flood of dozens of such arguments, the skeptic should just stop it: "Wait, wait. Instead of doing this whole shotgun-argumentation thingie, how about we discuss one argument at a time? Just present me with one argument and we can discuss it."

The other, closely related type of argumentation is one where the other person does indeed present an argument, allow the skeptic to answer it... but then immediately moves to the next argument without even acknowledging the answer. The goal is simple: Go through argument after argument until he stumbles across one that the skeptic has no good answer to, and then declare victory.

As a skeptic, don't just allow that to happen: After you have properly answered the very first argument, if the other person immediately jumps to another, don't allow him. "Wait, before we move to something else, do you accept my answer or do you have some objection to it? If you don't accept my answer, what is the problem in it?" Just don't simply allow the other person to move on until he has either acknowledged the validity of your answer, or clearly demonstrated that he is figuratively putting his fingers in his ears and doesn't want to even listen to nor acknowledge any answers.

In some cases you may even be able to flip the entire situation on its head this way. In other words, rather than you being overwhelmed by a barrage of arguments and getting stumped by one of them, it may well be the believer / conspiracy theorist who gets stumped because he is just unable to acknowledge the validity of your answers, and you are not letting him proceed without doing that, or presenting a valid response. The rapid-fire shotgun argumentation tactic doesn't work if you don't allow it. 

"Questions atheists can't answer" is a dumb argument

One of the most common forms of Christian argumentation, which you can find tons and tons of examples on websites and video sharing platforms, uses the form "X questions atheists can't answer".

For some reason many Christians and Christian apologists believe that not only is this a completely legit form of argumentation but that it is, in fact, some of the strongest proofs of God's existence (and, obviously, that it's the God of Christianity described in the Bible.)

Yet, it's one of the dumbest forms of argumentation. That's because it's a direct textbook example of straightforward argumentum ad ignorantiam, ie. argument from ignorance.

("Ignorance" in the name of the fallacy does not refer to the person making the argument being ignorant. It refers to "not knowing (something)". In other words, it's an argument of the form "if you don't know (this thing), then my claims are true.")

It doesn't even matter if those questions can actually be answered or not. Even putting aside that question, even assuming that those question legitimately cannot be answered, that "atheists" indeed "can't answer" those questions, that means absolutely nothing.

Your position doesn't somehow become valid because someone doesn't know the answer to some question. It doesn't even matter what the question is.

As an example, even if someone can't answer the question "where did the Universe come from?" that doesn't somehow make the assertion of "God did it" any more legit. It merely means that that person doesn't know the answer to that question.

The idea behind the argument is genuinely strange. It's like an answer, any answer, somehow becomes valid if others can't give an alternative answer. "If you can't give me an answer of your own, then my answer is correct." That's, rather obviously, not how it works, at any level.

There are still open questions in science, that's certain. However, the correct approach to studying those questions and trying to find out their answers is not to just jump to a completely asinine "God must have done it!" Even if some questions genuinely have no answer, that doesn't somehow justify religious beliefs. It simply means that we don't know.

(By the way, this is something that too few skeptics point out when presented these "questions they can't answer". They fall into the trap of trying to answer those questions. The problem with doing that is that it inadvertently legitimates the underlying argument, in other words, that if the skeptic indeed can't answer the questions then it somehow gives credibility to the God claim. Skeptics shouldn't start answering any questions without first making it clear that it doesn't matter if they can answer them or not. It's not a valid form of argumentation. It's an argumentative fallacy.)