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I skimmed several debates with WLC yesterday, referenced here. His arguments are largely based on one and the same scheme:
(Or something like this, the step 3 is a bit more subtle than I made it out to be.) What's remarkable, even though he uses a nontrivial number of paradoxes for the step 2, almost all of them were explicitly explained in the material on Overcoming Bias. At least, I was never confused while listening to his arguments, whereas some of his opponents were, on some of the arguments. I don't see WLC as possessing magical oratorial skills, but he bends the facts on occasion, and is very careful in what he says. Also, his presentations are too debugged to be alive, so it looks unnatural.
The general meta-counterargument would be to break this scheme, as he could present some paradox (e.g. anthropics) without clear known resolution, and through it bend his line. I'm sure he knows lots of paradoxes, so there is a real danger of encountering an unknown one.
He knows Bayesian math. On one occasion, he basically replied to a statement that there is no evidence for God that it's only relevant if you expect more evidence for God if it exists, as opposed to if it doesn't, and if you expect no evidence in both cases, this fact can't be lowered a priori probability. This, of course, contradicts the rest of his arguments, but I guess he'll say that those arguments are some different kind of evidence.
Many of WLC's arguments have this rough structure:
That's why I think that in order to debate him you have to explicitly challenge the idea that God could ever be a good answer to anything; otherwise, you disappear down the rabbit hole of trying to straighten out the philosophical confusions of your audience.
"saying 'God' is an epistemic placebo -- it gives you the feeling of a solution without actually solving anything"
something like that?
Well, you could start with something like that, but you're going to have to set out why it doesn't solve anything. Which I think means you're going to have to make the "lady down the street is a witch; she did it" argument. Making that simple enough to fit into a debate slot is a real challenge, but it is the universal rebuke to everything WLC argues.
I like to put it this way: Religion is junk food. It sates the hunger of curiosity without providing the sustenance of knowledge.