Hope? Yes. It would be nice for there to be a God that will extend my existence and give my life new meaning or purpose beyond what I would otherwise have. If there is a God, it would be good to understand why the world is as it is.
As for the back of my mind, that's trickier. We don't control our subconscious. It is unreliable and very difficult to correct wrong ideas or reactions. I am glad that I did not grow up in a religion that taught something like hellfire and eternal suffering, because that would still torment me even if I had stopped believing in it consciously. As it is, my only sadness is the idea that the ride will eventually end and I won't be able to see how things go.
As for faith in evolution, I think there is an important difference. When I was a believer, it was because I'd always been told that Jehovah existed, and was never encouraged to challenge this idea, so that was my starting point. When I finally did challenge it (unintentionally, as it happens), I found that it wasn't possible to prove God's existence. I could challenge the alternatives, but that is not the same as proving it on its own (which would have made the alternatives moot!).
Evolution, like any scientific theory, was developed using the scientific method. While not perfect, it does a good job of weeding out human failings over the long term. With more than 150 years of research and challenges and new developments and discoveries, the theory of evolution apparently has become stronger. I have faith in that process. If there are things that science has wrong about evolution, they'll figure it out in time. Same for other fields of science. We cannot eliminate the biases that cause people to get wrong answers. But the scientific approach can weed them out over time.
