For an academic definition of religion see Ninian Smart’s Dimensions of Religion.

It will make the definition clear when you are relating with some of the academic minds here.

"I must respectfully disagree." one of those wondrous phrases on a par with "with all due respect" and "I'm not racist but..."
You can almost guarantee the person saying it is about to be totally disrespectful based on spurious reasoning and and ill informed nonsense.

I do NOT have faith that there is/are no god(s) I simple have no evidence to justify my believing in it or them, because no evidence exists. Therefore I adopt the default position that the contention that there are deities has not meet the burden of proof and so can be disregarded until such time as it does.
Faith in the religious sense is the answer given by desperate religious people when there is no evidence reason or logic for holding a belief, it is irrational and stupid to do so, but is given undue tolerance and respect based on hundreds of years of social indoctrination by religion.
I don't ask for evidence of the non existence of pixies, why should I need evidence for the non existence of deity.

That is true of Hard Atheism, but you will find that true Hard Atheism is very rare, and that such a large part of sceptical people are either, Soft Atheists or Agnostics of one sort or another, that Hard Atheists are rare and not generally very important to the whole picture.

And since I think that, the existence or not of god is trivial and unimportant, when compared with the issue of whether god communicates or not. Since a deist god, who has no message for us or hides from us, affects nothing, and is therefore of no practical consequence, because it generates no dogma. Therefore I always think of the big division as lying between organized religion, which has dogma and laws, and any place on the sceptical spectrum from deist through agnostic to atheist, whose inner divides are much smaller, and am happy to call myself a Broad Church Sceptic.

No. Religion is belief in or worship of a superhuman power. What I have is a distinct LACK of belief. Do you have “faith” that there is no Easter bunny? Or leprechauns? Nope - just not buying something for which there is no evidence. And definitely not worshipping it.