I think you've fallen for a red herring here. Certainly, the personal attack of Craig doesn't mean much, but it's especially irrelevant to suggest that Craig is afraid of life's absurdity. Clearly, he's not afraid, as those shallow atheists suggest, because he's a Christian theist so he doesn't believe in the cosmic conditions of that meaninglessness.

No, the sociological point to make would be not that Craig's afraid but that he's trying to scare folks into accepting Christian theism. He's emphasizing the downside of atheistic naturalism to hold up Christianity as a more comforting alternative. Of course, the unpleasantness of a proposition doesn't make it false, so this tactic of Craig's is fallacious.

I also emphasize atheism's downside in my criticisms of the shallowness of new atheism and of vulgar secular society. The old, existential atheists such as Nietzsche and Freud did likewise. So not all atheists hide the dark implications.

In any case, Craig's characterization isn't entirely correct. If there's no God, the universe somehow created itself. If it's currently "dying," as Craig suggest, who's to say the universe won't create itself again in a great cycle of creation and destruction?

Moreover, ultimate aesthetic values seem to fall out of that natural self-creativity. But I suspect it takes a form of godless enlightenment to appreciate the meaning of life's "absurdity."