The fact is that of course there's no proof. The reason the guy got so shirty earlier is because he knows there's no proof and is in fact so up there on his high horse that he doesn't believe anyone has the right to suggest that because there's no proof, it shouldn't be believed.
You have every right to ask the question and I truly wish more people would.
Creation -
Just because you can't see any physical way for something to be made from nothing, doesn't mean magic put it there. I'd rather come up with no solution at all than a bad one. Who is to say that in a few hundred/thousand years time, a method for the creation of solid matter from dark matter isn't isolated? I don't know. You don't know. Stop pretending you do.
Hope -
The planet and, indeed, the universe doesn't owe you a sense of hope. It could be that we live an entirely hopeless existence (I, as a matter of fact, don't think that's the case) but you can't say you believe in something because it gives you hope or any other emotion. You believe it because there is evidence proving it's existence.
Morality -
Anyone who believes that one has to believe in God because we have morals is under a misapprehension regarding the source of morals. It's a profound insult to us in our deepest nature and character. It is not the case that we do not set about butchering and raping and thieving from eachother right now only because we're afraid of a divine punishment or looking for a divine reward. It's an extraordinarily base and insulting thing to say to people.
On my mother's side, some of my ancestry is Jewish. I don't happen to believe the story of Moses in Egypt or the exile or of the wandering in the Sinai but now even Israeli archeology has shown that there isn't a word of truth to that story or any of the others, but take it to be true.
Am I expected to believe that my mother's ancestors got all the way to Mount Sinai (quite a trek), under the impression, until they got there, that rape, murder, perjury and theft were ok? Only to be told at the foot of Mount Sinai "Bad news... none of these things are kosher after all".
Nobody would have been able to GET as far as Mount Sinai, unless they had known that human solidarity demands that we look upon eachother as brothers and sisters and that we forbid activities such as murder, rape, theft... etc. This is innate in us. Those to whom it is not innate (the sociopaths who don't understand the needs of anyones but their own and the psychopaths who positively take pleasure in breaking these rules), all we can say is that, according to one theory, they're also made in the image of God. The likelihood is though that they can be explained by further research and scientific study.
I used the Jewish theme as a personal thing... feel free to use the relevant counterpart.
At no point here is God or religion a help where it claims to help most which is to our morality.
