I definitely agree that religion has had a destructive force, but I firmly believe that religion and faith are two separate entities. Faith shouldn't be solely limited to words that define faith in the context of a belief in God. I'm sure that you know this but in the early Jewish faith, the Jewish people did not use a name for God or Yahweh openly. I think there were a lot of reasons for this, and the early texts indicate principles of cleanliness and other factors, but principally I think that it was a recognition of the inherent danger of defining the supreme sovereignty with the temporally limited context of language. Therefore, faith could also be defined as the belief of a sovereign principle. For me, that principle is in a righteous and forgiving God, but for others, that principle could be a faith in goodness or equality. Either way, faith is a transcendent belief that defies the empirical evidence offered by day to day reality. So, since faith is in opposition to that which is observable, faith cannot readily be deemed the causation of our worldly woes. That said, people often confuse their faith with their religiosity. Religion in a sense is adherence to a certain set of behaviors, and that, is simply not faith.