A press release for the Atheist Alliance of America/Texas Freethought Convention Houston, which is scheduled to "take place October 7-9, 2011 at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Houston":

The event will feature renowned British biologist and author Richard Dawkins as its keynote speaker.

Professor Dawkins will also be on hand to present his namesake award to author and journalist Christopher Hitchens, whose attendance at the event is anticipated but will depend on his schedule.

“Houston is an ideal location for this year's convention,” says Nick Lee, President of Atheist Alliance of America. “The city has several of the nation's largest organized groups of freethinkers, humanists, secularists, atheists and skeptics, and their numbers are growing every day.”

I'm an atheist (or more precisely a Spinozist—atheism and Spinozism is much like electricity and magnetism) and a big fan of Dawkin's The Ancestor's Tale, but this event sounds perfectly dreadful. There is something wrong about a congregation of atheists, a gathering of nonbelievers. It makes it feel like we have removed God but kept the church. But I would much prefer to keep God and get rid of the church.