Houston gets a special visit from not one, but two of the biggest names in atheism this weekend – not bad for a city with a church operating in an old NBA arena.

In conjunction with the Atheist Alliance of America, the Texas Freethought Convention opened Thursday night for three days of speeches, panel discussions, workshops and (interestingly enough) live music at the Hyatt Regency. With a theme titled “From Grassroots to Global Impact,” the convention has opened its doors to atheists, agnostics, freethinkers, secularists, rationalists, non-believers, deists, humanists and skeptics.

“While the East and West Coasts are typically friendly environments for us,” says San Antonio resident and current Atheist Alliance of America president Nick Lee, “we feel we make a more of an impact in the interior parts of the U.S.”

The convention is currently sold out with an expected attendance of more than 700 guests.

Perhaps the weekend’s biggest event is on Saturday, when famed Vanity Fair critic Christopher Hitchens receives the Freethinker of the Year Award, joining a list of past recipients that includes Susan Jacoby and Bill Maher. Presiding over the ceremony will be keynote speaker Richard Dawkins, the notable evolutionary biologist whose Foundation for Reason and Science supports critical thinking and evidence-based natural science worldwide.

Both Hitchens and Dawkins stand at the forefront of “New Atheism,” a term popularized in a 2006 Wired magazine article to describe a mounting vocal attack against religion from intellectual circles in the United States and Britain. New Atheists have a particular concern about intelligent design.

“They condemn not just belief in God but respect for belief in God,” wrote author Gary Wolf of Dawkins and fellow writers Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett. For this batch of new atheists, religion “is not only wrong; it's evil.”

In the bestselling The God Delusion from 2006 not only does Dawkins wholeheartedly contend that a superior being does not exist, he considers belief in a personal god “delusional.” At a special talk last year at the Wortham Center, Dawkins took a particular stab at the Texas Board of Education’s consideration of religiously-tinged science textbooks.

Hitchens continued to map out the public debate in 2007’s equally bestselling God Is Not Great, which characterizes organized religion as violent, irrational and “allied to racism,” not to mention “contemptuous of women and coercive toward children." Likewise, the book caused quite a stir, earning Hitchens labels that ranged from Marxist and hack to a neoconservative and bigot.

Hitchens’ appearance this Saturday marks a return to the public forum, after a battle with esophageal cancer that began last year. The author canceled a April 2011 talk at the American Atheist national convention after losing his voice during treatments.

In an apology letter, he rallied the disappointed conventioneers with words of encouragement: “Our weapons are the ironic mind against the literal . . . the open mind against the credulous.”

“Resolve to build up Mr. Jefferson's wall of separation,” he closed. “And don't keep the faith.”

In light of the popularity of this weekend’s convention, Richard Dawkins also will speak at Rice University’s Stude Concert Hall in the Shepherd School of Music at 7 p.m. on Monday. The event is free and open to the public. See the Rice Media website for details.