The short run to Nihilism

Last quote from Scruton, p. 157 (its a short book):

...nihilism is the other side of religion: it is the disappointed howl of the believer on discovering that God is dead. The true nihilist is incapable of settling for a world of compromise [he speaks here of politico-religious things]...since it is a world deprived of absolutes. The death of God leaves only one remaining absolute, which is Nothingness. The duty to annihilate is the last remaining glimpse of the transendental in the heart of the one who has lost all belief in it and who cannot live with the loss.

I couldn't help but connect this wonderfully succinct analysis with that which lies at the heart of evolution, its negative engine: death. Read, and feel the irony.