Is the belief in God ultimately harmful to society?

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It might depend on how you define "belief" and "God."   If you say belief in God is ultimately harmful to society, what are you comparing it to?  Belief in something else that cannot be made into a "God"?  Or the absence of belief?

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It's important to remember here that religion and belief in God are not the same thing.

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It's important to remember here that religion and belief in God are not the same thing.

Why? And how so? Especially in an American context.

Because there are all sorts of aspects of religion that can't be summed up by "belief in God," (not to mention that religion is possible without belief in God).
Belief in God is something abstract, unless its qualified or contextualized.  By itself, it doesn't make much of a difference in anything.
There are plenty of people who believe in God in some abstract sense but aren't religious. I think that's especially true in America. 

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Because there are all sorts of aspects of religion that can't be summed up by "belief in God," (not to mention that religion is possible without belief in God).
Belief in God is something abstract, unless its qualified or contextualized.  By itself, it doesn't make much of a difference in anything.
There are plenty of people who believe in God in some abstract sense but aren't religious. I think that's especially true in America. 

It seems you're referring to organized religion when you refer to religion in general, which of course makes all the difference. A belief in a god makes someone by definition religious. They may not belong to a specific religion, but that's not what religion itself is. Though in the US you could argue that the massive religious industry in this country has led to the perception that you must be involved monetarily and physically (going to church) in order to have a "religion". The overly complicated explanations by the religious in the US in particular to attempt to reason that somehow believing in the Christian god is somehow a separate concept from being religious is nonsense on the same level that gods are in general.

No, a belief in a god makes someone by definition a theist.  I don't see how someone can be religious in the absence of any religious tradition, community, practice, experience, etc. Christianity is a religion, yes. I don't go for the idea that Christianity is not a religion but a relationship, since religion is all about a relationship to the sacred.  I'm not saying religion can't be idiosyncratic, since that involves a religious search or commitment in itself.  Religion really is as much about search and questioning as it is about belief.