I think we need faith in something or, in this context, nothing, in order to have meaning.

We are the only animal that can toil in vain. For all other animals today is the marker of life, and their purpose is met when they sustain themselves and procreate.

For us life is both lived and imagined. It's in the imagining that nihilism can thrive. We have both the gift and the curse of creativity. We are creators (in this capacity we are made in God's image: a creator) . We have the ability to perform the most mundane tasks for the most noble reasons, or ignoble.

Life is what we make of it. I think nihilism is a perfectly rational response to the world we find ourselves in. For me, however, it is unconvincing.