I agree that Phil is right. However, he fails to make the distinction between the utility of science and the utility of religion and he fails to define what faith is. Also, the tone of his article implies a motive of rallying the troops rather than educating the ignorant, which I thought what he was about.

Personally I don't think it's appropriate to ostracize the word faith in order to maintain the causality of science. If he wants to educate his readers then he should have explained that the one assumption we rationalists do make is not made based on the authority of others but the observation and knowledge we've accumulated through out history. That is the distinction. The assumption we've made is as much a process of science as our methods themselves. We hypothesize the universe to obey a set of rules because all observations to date either support the idea or drive further inquiry. One might say, "Well how do you explain the study of black holes? They seem to break plenty of rules but we didn't rewrite our main hypothesis! (The universe obeys a set of rules)" To which the response would be that just because we don't understand something doesn't mean it it disproves our main assumption. Certain elements of science specifically disprove certain elements of religion. That is the distinction.