Thomas Nagel, in his book The Last Word, offered a revealing insight into his personal motivations for his atheistic beliefs: "I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope that there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that."
Jay Budziszewski responded to Nagel's comments in the journal First Things. There he said that if Nagel's motivations are true of most atheists, then "those who say that theism is a crutch have got it backwards…; it is atheism that serves as a crutch."
