My beliefs always seem to be in flux, I have a hard time taking a hard stance on this issue (which probably reveals a weakness of my character but oh well)
I'm currently reading The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker, and I have found it to be one of the most penetrating and insightful books I have ever read. It is a summary book where he uses the ideas of many great thinkers (Soren Kierkegaard, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and Otto Rank) as a springboard to espouse his own synthesized viewpoints.
A fair portion of the book is dedicated to examing Freud's ideas and personal character, and he does a splendid job of revealing the shortcomings in both. At one point he quotes from an author named Gregory Zilboorg who wrote a book called Psychoanalysis and Religion. Zilboorg was raised Russian Orthodox and converted to Catholicism later in life.
Ever since man started his so-called "conquest of nature," he has tried to fancy himself the conqueror of the universe. In order to assure himself of the mastery of a conqueror, he grabbed the trophy (nature, universe). He had to feel that the Maker of the trophy was annihilated, or his own fantasied sovereignty over the universe would be endangered. It is the trend that is reflected in Freud's unwillingness to accept religious faith in its true meaning...It is no surprise, therefore, to find that in the field of human psychology a man, no matter how great--a man like Freud--had constantly before him the vision of a man who is always unhappy, helpless, anxious bitter, looking into nothingness with fright..."
This quote, (while I don't know how much it communicates by itself) taken with the rest of the chapter on Freud, and the rest of the book for that matter, has me seriously reconsidering my agnosticism, as it seems to me like these two viewpoints (A/A) only offer despair.
