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It's logically impossible to prove that something does not exist. Religion is based on that very point, it's something that can be based only on irrational beliefs, and thus is immune to most criticism.
But aside from that, many things that were said in this thread aren't true at all.
First and foremost, religion in most cases is not a foundation of values. Rather, the values are based on people's existing cultural and instinctive intuitions, which are stripped from their origins and turned into abstract, impersonal concepts, and are subsequently turned into "universal truths" by relating them to an infallible source.
Secondly, persecution can actually work against religions. The spread of both christianity and islam is in large part due to the prohibition and persecution of other religions. If you look at the European Reformation, many forms of christianity only thrived because they had political backing (often based on political motives, e.g. many German nobles supported Lutheranism because it allowed them to confiscate lands belonging to the Catholic church). However, some relatively popular radical reformists and their followers were effectively wiped out because they did not have backing from the political rulers of the day.
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