A Response to William Lane Craig

Dr. William Lane Craig is a well-known Christian Apologist philosopher and theologian. He operates a website called (and I assume he means this without irony) reasonablefaith.org. On his website you can listen to podcasts about how awful atheism is, why gay marriage is bad, and even buy books for children with clever titles like "What Is God Like? God Is All-Good!" (not making this up.)

He also has several compositions available to read, one of which is entitled "The Absurdity of Life Without God." Since I will probably never be invited to debate with Dr. Craig in person (although many people much smarter than I have been - just search for Dr. Craig on YouTube), I'll just publish my reactions to his assertions here in my own webspace.

Now, this particular article of Dr. Craig's is rather lengthy, and it contains several extended quotes from other authors and philosophers, as well as some anecdotes, so for the sake of brevity I won't reproduce the entire thing here. Rather, I'll quote parts of Dr. Craig's writings directly and then respond thereafter, keeping the order of the original text. Please don't accuse me of cherry-picking; I could respond to every single sentence.

Or, if you'd simply like the Reader's Digest version of what Dr. Craig thinks and why I think he has the brain of a six year old, I can sum it up like this:

• Dr. Craig thinks that life without God would be so utterly hopeless and terrible that it cannot in fact be true, so therefore Biblical Christianity is the only reasonable choice.
• I accuse Dr. Craig of repeatedly employing two logical fallacies in putting forth his arguments: the so-called argument from personal incredulity and false dichotomy.

That's everything in a nutshell. The slightly longer-winded version goes like this, with Dr. Craig's text in italics and my reactions immediately following.

The Absurdity of Life without God

William Lane Craig

Why on atheism life has no ultimate meaning, value, or purpose, and why this view is unlivable.

The Necessity of God and Immortality

Since the Enlightenment, when he threw off the shackles of religion, man has tried to answer these questions without reference to God. But the answers that came back were not exhilarating, but dark and terrible.

"Dark and terrible" is simply a matter of opinion. There is certainly no consensus that the answers to fundamental questions with God are flowery and cheerful, and without, dark and terrible. 

Modern man thought that when he had gotten rid of God, he had freed himself from all that repressed and stifled him. Instead, he discovered that in killing God, he had also killed himself. For if there is no God, then man's life becomes absurd.

Let me just stop you at the phrase "killing God," because that falsely implies that modern man has collectively ceased to believe in God. For many people, there was never a belief in God to begin with, so the killing metaphor is not apt. 

If God does not exist, then both man and the universe are inevitably doomed to death.

This implies that, if God does exist, then somehow both man and the universe are not inevitably doomed to death. Perhaps this follows logically in Dr. Craig's brain, but he offers no evidence for this assertion whatsoever, and so it can be as freely dismissed as false as he freely asserts it to be true. Since this is basically the thesis of his entire article, I should really just stop here. I won't, though; the rest of it is just too silly to ignore. 

For though I know now that I exist, that I am alive, I also know that someday I will no longer exist, that I will no longer be, that I will die. This thought is staggering and threatening: to think that the person I call "myself" will cease to exist, that I will be no more!

Yeah, Epicurus solved this problem back in the 4th century BCE, but apparently Dr. Craig is still having some difficulty. The idea is pretty simple: once you're dead, you can't lament the fact that you're dead, because you're dead. You won't care that you're dead, because you can't. As long as you're alive, death is no concern, because you're not dead; when death comes, you're no longer alive. The fear of death is irrational, and any time spent freaking out about it, like Dr. Craig is doing, is wasted time.

And the universe, too, faces death. Scientists tell us that the universe is expanding, and everything in it is growing farther and farther apart. As it does so, it grows colder and colder, and its energy is used up. Eventually all the stars will burn out and all matter will collapse into dead stars and black holes. There will be no light at all; there will be no heat; there will be no life; only the corpses of dead stars and galaxies, ever expanding into the endless darkness and the cold recesses of space—a universe in ruins. So not only is the life of each individual person doomed; the entire human race is doomed. There is no escape. There is no hope.

...and? What if this is the truth? It seems to be true, from what we can observe about the natural world. This is the conclusion reached from the data we have. Sorry if this is somehow upsetting to Dr. Craig - that doesn't make it any less possible. 

The Absurdity of Life without God and Immortality

If there is no God, then man and the universe are doomed. Like prisoners condemned to death, we await our unavoidable execution. There is no God, and there is no immortality. And what is the consequence of this? It means that life itself is absurd. It means that the life we have is without ultimate significance, value, or purpose.

...and? What if this is the truth? This is also a fallacy of false dichotomy. Dr. Craig seems to think that there are two possibilities, and two alone: there's no God and life is absurd, or there's a God and life has meaning. This ignores the possibilities that there is no God and life has meaning from some other source, and there is a God but life still has no meaning. Dr. Craig must explain away these other two possibilities if we're to accept his dichotomy. He does address the first one later, but the second - that a God exists but life is still absurd - is never addressed. He also offers no positive evidence to support the link between God existing and life having "ultimate significance, value, [and] purpose." Apparently to him one entails the other, but this is simply assumed to be true and never proven. 

No Ultimate Meaning without Immortality and God

If each individual person passes out of existence when he dies, then what ultimate meaning can be given to his life? Does it really matter whether he ever existed at all? His life may be important relative to certain other events, but what is the ultimate significance of any of those events? If all the events are meaningless, then what can be the ultimate meaning of influencing any of them? Ultimately it makes no difference.

 ...and? What if this is the truth? Dr. Craig seems to demand that each individual life have ultimate significance and meaning, as if the universe owes this to us. There is no rational motivation for making this claim; he simply finds the negation of it so utterly depressing that it can't possibly be true. This is the fallacy of argument from personal incredulity, which may as well be renamed the Dr. William Lane Craig fallacy, for as often as he succumbs to it.

And the same is true of each individual person. The contributions of the scientist to the advance of human knowledge, the researches of the doctor to alleviate pain and suffering, the efforts of the diplomat to secure peace in the world, the sacrifices of good men everywhere to better the lot of the human race--all these come to nothing. This is the horror of modern man: because he ends in nothing, he is nothing.

The failure here is in separating ultimate meaning (defined as something which persists not just after the death of the individual, but after the death of the universe) and meaning while we're alive. This is the popular claim that atheism leads to nihilism, which is manifestly not true (as a great many atheists are not nihilists.) While it's apparently true that, ultimately, none of our actions means anything, it is not true that they are meaningless while we're alive. I do not agree that the fact that eventually we'll all be gone means that there's no point in any of us doing anything while we're here. I see great value in contributing to the general happiness and prosperity of mankind while we're all permitted existence during this brief period. Dr. Craig finds it impossible to do this without invoking God, and again I'll reiterate that he never makes explicit exactly how God's existence remedies this supposed problem. 

But it is important to see that it is not just immortality that man needs if life is to be meaningful. Mere duration of existence does not make that existence meaningful. If man and the universe could exist forever, but if there were no God, their existence would still have no ultimate significance. Now if God does not exist, our lives are just like that. They could go on and on and still be utterly without meaning. We could still ask of life, "So what?" So it is not just immortality man needs if life is to be ultimately significant; he needs God and immortality. And if God does not exist, then he has neither.

Dr. Craig believes that he has somehow established that immortality is necessary for meaning in life, even though he has only offered negative evidence for the opposite of his claim and no positive evidence for the affirmation of it. Nevertheless, he makes a second leap, namely that we also need God for meaning, not just immortality. Again, please note that nowhere in here does he even come close to attempting to explain just why God's existence equals meaning in our lives. This goes utterly unexplained, as if it's so obvious that it needn't be expressed.

French existentialists Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus understood this, too. Sartre portrayed life in his play No Exit as hell—the final line of the play are the words of resignation, "Well, let's get on with it." Hence, Sartre writes elsewhere of the "nausea" of existence. Camus, too, saw life as absurd. At the end of his brief novel The Stranger, Camus's hero discovers in a flash of insight that the universe has no meaning and there is no God to give it one.

Kudos for defaulting to the experts on the absurd life, as the existentialists really do it best. Still, this is not an argument that the existentialist position is false, but rather that it's quite unpleasant. This is an assertion that many existentialists would agree with anyway. The question of whether or not the existentialist position is true is affected in no way by whether or not it is pleasant. Dr. Craig still can't seem to divorce the two in his head. For him, it's impossible that we live in a word which sucks, so therefore we don't. At this point the most difficult thing to understand is why so many people take this man's opinions seriously. 

No Ultimate Value Without Immortality and God

If life ends at the grave, then it makes no difference whether one has lived as a Stalin or as a saint. Since one's destiny is ultimately unrelated to one's behavior, you may as well just live as you please. Sacrifice for another person would be stupid.

See my above retort about life having no meaning because it is not eternal. I see nothing inherently problematic about a statement like "sacrifice for another person would be stupid" regardless of the immortality of man. There's another large problem with this argument, which actually makes Dr. Craig look like the far less moral person: which is the more morally-sound person of these two - the man who doesn't murder his neighbor because he feels that this is somehow inherently unjust and damaging to society, or the man who doesn't murder his neighbor because the Bible says not to, and he fears celestial retribution? If you really need to be told by God that murder is wrong, then it sounds to me like you're really just a frustrated would-be murderer, not a moral person. The idea that we get our morality from God or the Bible (two different arguments entirely, by the way) is a joke. This is yet another false dichotomy as well: Dr. Craig does not allow the possibility that an unjust God would exist, or a God who was completely indifferent about the issue of morality. There's no reason to dismiss these possibilities and only grant that, either there's no God and we live in a moral free-for-all, or there is a God and there is ultimate moral value.

But the problem becomes even worse. For, regardless of immortality, if there is no God, then there can be no objective standards of right and wrong. Moral values are either just expressions of personal taste or the by-products of socio-biological evolution and conditioning.

Again, this makes the assumption that if God exists, he will without question be a moral authority. There is no good reason to assume this and dismiss any other possibilities. What if God exists, but he is completely indifferent to what we do? What if he exists, but he is patently evil, and what he thinks is right is generally the opposite of what most people hold as moral? If Dr. Craig is offering the Bible as his version of objective standards of right and wrong (a reasonable assumption, since he's a Christian Apologist), then he must be an extremely warped person of whom I would be rather distrusting. Seriously, if you really want to make the argument that moral standards come from the Bible, read the Bible. There's no way you'll get through the Pentateuch with that view still firmly intact.

In a world without God, who is to say which values are right and which are wrong?

Lots of people. Parents, judicial systems, our own biological instincts, as Dr. Craig mentioned above...

The concept of morality loses all meaning in a universe without God. In a world without God, there can be no objective right and wrong, only our culturally and personally relative, subjective judgments.

This is an utter non-sequitur. The concept of morality will always exist, because people will always have an idea about what is right and what is wrong. They may not agree, but this is not the same as there being no meaning to anyone's opinion. Why denigrate our "culturally and personally relative, subjective judgments?" What happens when God and his moral authority say that, for example, homosexuality is a sin, but society starts to feel differently? Many, many people in the US firmly disagree with God on this issue, and an increasing number of state legislatures as well. It is not unreasonable to assume that, after some time, gay marriage will be legal everywhere in the US. What about when equality for everyone seems to be the morally correct course of action to society at large, but God and his moral authority say no? Evolutionary biology provides some insights as to why we might inherently find murder and stealing to be wrong. In this case it's even easier than usual to dismiss Dr. Craig's assertion as manifestly false.

This means that it is impossible to condemn war, oppression, or crime as evil. Nor can one praise brotherhood, equality, and love as good.

No, it isn't. The question of whence comes our ultimate knowledge of right and wrong is an extremely complicated one. There are over seven billion people in the world, and the vast majority of those people are not Christians. They obviously get their morality from somewhere other than the Bible. I've never heard of a society that doesn't have basic laws like "don't murder" and "don't steal," including those in ancient times which predated the Abrahamic religions.

For in a universe without God, good and evil do not exist—there is only the bare valueless fact of existence, and there is no one to say you are right and I am wrong.

...and? What if this is the truth? Sorry to sound like a broken record, but just because you don't want to live in a world with no moral absolutes doesn't mean that you don't, or that you can't. 

No Ultimate Purpose Without Immortality and God

If death stands with open arms at the end of life's trail, then what is the goal of life? Is it all for nothing? Is there no reason for life? And what of the universe? Is it utterly pointless? If its destiny is a cold grave in the recesses of outer space the answer must be, yes—it is pointless.

...and? What if this is the truth? Yet again, false dichotomy. Dr. Craig never spells out exactly how the existence of God somehow automatically provides meaning to life.

But more than that: even if it did not end in death, without God life would still be without purpose. For man and the universe would then be simple accidents of chance, thrust into existence for no reason. Without God the universe is the result of a cosmic accident, a chance explosion. There is no reason for which it exists.

Yes, this is a much better explanation: God created the entire expanse of the universe so that a small collection of people on one planet could worship him for a short amount of time before they are destroyed by the universe he created. Very meaningful.

As for man, he is a freak of nature— a blind product of matter plus time plus chance. Man is just a lump of slime that evolved rationality.

This is merely one way of looking at it, and a quite morose one at that. Evidence does suggest that we are indeed a "lump of slime that evolved rationally," although I'd rather spend my time marveling at the incredible events which had to take place for life to exist rather than reducing it all to nothing simply because God had nothing to do with it. 

Do you understand the gravity of the alternatives before us? For if God exists, then there is hope for man. But if God does not exist, then all we are left with is despair. Do you understand why the question of God's existence is so vital to man?

Do you understand that you haven't even proven the premises of your argument, so that it does not produce a valid conclusion? Why is there hope for man simply because God exists? Do you understand that it's entirely possible that "all we are left with is despair?" Do you understand why the question of God's existence must be answered by facts and evidence, not emotions and wishful thinking?

Unfortunately, the mass of mankind do not realize this fact.

Unfortunately, Dr. Craig does not know the meaning of the word "fact."

They continue on as though nothing has changed.

That's because nothing has changed. Some people believe in God, some people don't. This has been the case for every culture in the history of mankind.

But Nietzsche predicted that someday people would realize the implications of their atheism; and this realization would usher in an age of nihilism—the destruction of all meaning and value in life.

People who are atheists are perfectly happy with the implications of atheism, because we're living in a world which is reconciled with observable reality. The only people who see utter despair in a world without God are sheep like Dr. Craig, who is simply incapable of being an adult and accepting reality. I assume as an 8 year old he wrote books about how absurd life would be if there were no Santa Claus. Dr. Craig here invokes Nietzsche as if to suggest that we're now living in an age of nihilism, where there is no meaning and value in life. He provides no evidence of any sort to suggest that this is true.

Most people still do not reflect on the consequences of atheism and so, like the crowd in the marketplace, go unknowingly on their way. But when we realize, as did Nietzsche, what atheism implies, then his question presses hard upon us: how shall we, the murderers of all murderers, comfort ourselves?

Have you spoken with "most people," Dr. Craig? Atheists don't go "unknowingly" in any way. Atheism is the result of a systematic evaluation of the nature of reality and the conclusion that the God hypothesis is unnecessary to account for anything in it. How shall we comfort ourselves? However we'd like. I have friends and family, hobbies, things that make me happy. I have the comfort of knowing that I've given serious thought to the nature of the universe and my place in it, and I've come to a conclusion that not only makes sense to me but doesn't rely on faith, bad evidence, and self-delusion. 

The Practical Impossibility of Atheism

The fundamental problem with this solution, however, is that it is impossible to live consistently and happily within such a world view. If one lives consistently, he will not be happy; if one lives happily, it is only because he is not consistent. Francis Schaeffer has explained this point well. Modern man, says Schaeffer, resides in a two-story universe. In the lower story is the finite world without God; here life is absurd, as we have seen. In the upper story are meaning, value, and purpose. Now modern man lives in the lower story because he believes there is no God. But he cannot live happily in such an absurd world; therefore, he continually makes leaps of faith into the upper story to affirm meaning, value, and purpose, even though he has no right to, since he does not believe in God.

Falsest of false dichotomies. This entire argument hinges on the unestablished premise that all meaning, value, and purpose come from God. Dr. Craig has done no work whatsoever to establish this as true, and so no argument can be built upon it. Sorry, but there's nothing preventing an atheist from finding meaning, value, and purpose in his life. It is not a contradiction, not an inconsistency. 

Meaning of Life

First, the area of meaning. We saw that without God, life has no meaning.

We did? I don't recall seeing that, because you didn't do anything to explain it. You also didn't even consider the possibility that God could exist and still there could be no meaning in life.

Yet philosophers continue to live as though life does have meaning. For example, Sartre argued that one may create meaning for his life by freely choosing to follow a certain course of action.

The audacity! How dare someone live life as though it has meaning when he doesn't believe in God? You atheists go over there in the corner and be miserable; happiness and meaning are only for us, the deluded!

Now this is utterly inconsistent. It is inconsistent to say life is objectively absurd and then to say one may create meaning for his life.

Why? Dr. Craig seems to think that atheists must be punished for their denial of God by not being allowed to have any meaning in their lives.

If life is really absurd, then man is trapped in the lower story. To try to create meaning in life represents a leap to the upper story. But Sartre has no basis for this leap. Without God, there can be no objective meaning in life.

Again, this bit about the lower story and the upper story. Why does God have a monopoly on the upper story, the part where we get meaning and value? It is never established how or why God and God alone leads to these things.

Sartre's program is actually an exercise in self-delusion. Sartre is really saying, "Let's pretend the universe has meaning." And this is just fooling ourselves.

At this point I considered that Dr. Craig is actually an atheist, and all of this is just a giant joke. A Christian of all people should have absolutely no problem with self-delusion, since it's the only way he can even get out of bed in the morning. 

Value of Life

Turn now to the problem of value. Here is where the most blatant inconsistencies occur. First of all, atheistic humanists are totally inconsistent in affirming the traditional values of love and brotherhood. Camus has been rightly criticized for inconsistently holding both to the absurdity of life and the ethics of human love and brotherhood. The two are logically incompatible.

I feel like in Dr. Craig's mind, atheists are like Darth Vader, and Christians are like Luke Skywalker. The dark side (atheism) has to be about death and anger and fear and hate, but the Christian side is all about love and generosity and self-sacrifice. God does not have a monopoly on virtue. People value things like love and brotherhood because it makes us feel good; these things are intrinsically and self-evidently positive. I see no contradiction in being nice to each other in a world that ultimately has no meaning. Dr. Craig seems to think that denial of God must by necessity lead to a chaotic world of anarchy in which people just go around murdering each other at will. Since the world is not this way, all he can do is accuse atheists and humanists of a contradiction. Well gee, sorry we're not conforming to your ridiculous notions of what a Godless world must look like.

A second problem is that if God does not exist and there is no immortality, then all the evil acts of men go unpunished and all the sacrifices of good men go unrewarded. But who can live with such a view?

This is why we have a judicial system. We don't rely on God's judgment, because actions need to have consequences in this lifetime, and so they do. We don't simply wag our fingers at a murderer and say "God's gonna get you, fella!" Nor do we pass over the good deeds of the generous and say, "We don't really care about what you did, but God will grant you many blessings in the afterlife!" The evil acts of men don't go unpunished, nor the sacrifices of good men unrewarded. 

Purpose of Life

We often find the same inconsistency among those who say that man and the universe came to exist for no reason or purpose, but just by chance. Unable to live in an impersonal universe in which everything is the product of blind chance, these persons begin to ascribe personality and motives to the physical processes themselves. It is a bizarre way of speaking and represents a leap from the lower to the upper story. For example, Francis Crick halfway through his book The Origin of the Genetic Code begins to spell nature with a capital "N" and elsewhere speaks of natural selection as being "clever" and as "thinking" of what it will do. Fred Hoyle, the English astronomer, attributes to the universe itself the qualities of God. For Carl Sagan the "Cosmos," which he always spells with a capital letter, obviously fills the role of a God-substitute. Though all these men profess not to believe in God, they smuggle in a God-substitute through the back door because they cannot bear to live in a universe in which everything is the chance result of impersonal forces.

This is a new and exciting logical fallacy introduced by Dr. Craig, namely the tu quoque fallacy. Basically Dr. Craig tacitly admits that the idea of God the Creator is stupid by calling attention to the fact that some atheists have done it with Nature and the Cosmos. Nevermind the fact that Carl Sagan spelling Cosmos with a capital letter because he "cannot bear to live in a universe in which everything is the chance result of impersonal forces" is an extremely spurious notion. Dr. Craig is being incredibly irresponsible in attributing thoughts to Carl Sagan which he certainly never expressed. Suddenly Dr. Craig has some particular insight into the true inner-workings of Carl Sagan's mind that the rest of us missed somehow.

And it's interesting to see many thinkers betray their views when they're pushed to their logical conclusions. For example, certain feminists have raised a storm of protest over Freudian sexual psychology because it is chauvinistic and degrading to women. And some psychologists have knuckled under and revised their theories. Now this is totally inconsistent. If Freudian psychology is really true, then it doesn't matter if it's degrading to women. You can't change the truth because you don't like what it leads to. But people cannot live consistently and happily in a world where other persons are devalued. Yet if God does not exist, then nobody has any value. Only if God exists can a person consistently support women's rights.

 At this point I just want to run to the nearest thing and kill it. You need only pay attention to the sections I've bolded here. You can't change the truth because you don't like what it leads to. That's right, Dr. Craig. You can't change the truth at all, in fact, because it's the truth, and it's immutable. The irony of a Christian invoking such an argument against someone else is so staggering that I think Dr. Craig must have a learning disability of some sort. The last statement is so utterly inconsistent with reality that it's laugh-out-loud ridiculous: Only if God exists can a person consistently support women's rights. This statement is patently false. The Abrahamic religions are unapologetically oppressive to women.  The only worldview which advocates equality is one in which we needn't listen to a bigoted, narcissistic, asshole God who doesn't believe that everyone is created equal. 

The dilemma of modern man is thus truly terrible. The atheistic world view is insufficient to maintain a happy and consistent life. Man cannot live consistently and happily as though life were ultimately without meaning, value, or purpose. If we try to live consistently within the atheistic world view, we shall find ourselves profoundly unhappy. If instead we manage to live happily, it is only by giving the lie to our world view.

Dr. Craig seems really upset at the notion that an atheist could live happily. This idea is obviously profoundly disturbing to him, that someone could actually be happy without God, and so he accuses happy atheists of being inconsistent, deluded liars. If you don't find meaning and value in your life in the extremely small-minded and arbitrary way that Dr. Craig allows it, then you're a liar. 

The Success of Biblical Christianity

But if atheism fails in this regard, what about biblical Christianity? According to the Christian world view, God does exist, and man's life does not end at the grave. In the resurrection body man may enjoy eternal life and fellowship with God. Biblical Christianity therefore provides the two conditions necessary for a meaningful, valuable, and purposeful life for man: God and immortality.

Ah, finally! There it is. This is the exciting alternative to despair offered by Biblical Christianity: fellowship with God forever. What does that even mean? We all just sit around talking or whatever? This idea of eternal life in heaven is such an obvious man-made by-product of our irrational fear of death that I can't believe people still actually believe it to be true.

Because of this, we can live consistently and happily. Thus, biblical Christianity succeeds precisely where atheism breaks down.

I can think of no more inconsistent and contradictory life than that of the Christian. Every single Christian cherry-picks verses from the Bible to follow dutifully while ignoring the vast amount of their sacred, holy, infallible text. Christians preach tolerance and yet on the whole are the least tolerant people in America. In fact, to be a Christian in America is from its very onset a contradiction: the First Commandment says "Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me." The First Amendment to the Constitution: Freedom of Speech, Assembly, Religion, and Press. Atheism doesn't break down. It simply leads to conclusions which Dr. Craig is unable to accept, and so he basically throws a tantrum and says "no!" 

Conclusion

Now I want to make it clear that I have not yet shown biblical Christianity to be true.

Oh don't feel bad about that; nobody else has yet done that either.

But what I have done is clearly spell out the alternatives.

You've spelled out one alternative, to the unjustified exclusion of others.

If God does not exist, then life is futile.

Nothing about this statement has any bearing on the truth of it.

If the God of the Bible does exist, then life is meaningful.

This is not in any way an affirmation that the God of the Bible does exist, and so we can literally replace the if clause in this statement with anything at all. If the flying spaghetti monster exists, then life is meaningful. If Arrested Development is renewed for another season, then life is meaningful.

Only the second of these two alternatives enables us to live happily and consistently. Therefore, it seems to me that even if the evidence for these two options were absolutely equal, a rational person ought to choose biblical Christianity.

The evidence for these two options is not absolutely equal. There's no evidence whatsoever for Biblical Christianity. This is a pointless hypothetical because it will never be realized. Yes, perhaps it would make more sense if the evidence were equal, but the whole point of the matter is that the evidence is not equal!

It seems to me positively irrational to prefer death, futility, and destruction to life, meaningfulness, and happiness. As Pascal said, we have nothing to lose and infinity to gain.

No rational person would say "I prefer death, futility, and destruction to life, meaningfulness, and happiness." The use of the verb prefer here is ridiculous. Atheists are simply concerned with what is true, and then we accept whatever consequences follow from the truth of reality. If it happens that life really is the result of random chance, then we need to deal with that reality and accept the conclusions which come from it. Unlike Dr. Craig and his Christian brethren, the atheist doesn't start with the conclusion and work backwards, desperately trying to reassure himself that it's true.

Dr. Craig seems completely unable to imagine a world in which there is meaning without God, and so he spends a great deal of time trying to prove that somehow it really is impossible. This is utter nonsense. I picture him walking around trying to make sure that people who don't believe in God aren't happy. "Hey, hey you over there! You weren't in church this morning! Be all despondent and melancholy! Otherwise you're living a lie!"

What an asshole. Fuck you, Dr. Craig.