Is religion the root of all evils?

These days, surely and rightfully because of the attacks on science by advocates of intelligent design, a wave of essays have attacked strongly religions. We can also find regularly essays that give the feeling that if religions would be wiped out on Earth, wars, ignorance, murders would go away with them.

I am a bit uncomfortable with that idea. Yes, religion has proven, more so in that far past than during the twentieth century, that it can kill a lot of people. The problem with that interpretation is that in many cases, religion was the fuel, the catalysis, the motivating stick, but not necessarily the actual cause of the problem. Many so-called religious wars have started, not because they were protestant and we were catholic, not because they were muslims and we were christians, but because of geopolitical reasons, money and power. Ignoring those reasons and blaming religions alone is a dangerous and self-blinding view of the world. And failing to recognize that power, in many cases, drives those wars and conflicts is taking the risk to be inefficient in the resolution of those problems.