Can I start posting Hitchens and Dawkins or would peoples' heads explode?
Depends on the quote, I think. I remember reading a bit of Dawkin's works, and he was not the most diplomatic person in the world when debating a given religion vs. Atheism. Obviously I've survived reading his words without a cranial pressure overload, but then I relish the challenge to defend my faith intelligently rather than being offended that someone somewhere strongly believes differently than me.
Seriously, to contend that it's a religion is either a deliberate attempt to confuse the gullible by butchering the language or just plain ignorance. Where's the dogma? The ritual? The rites? The pantheon? It meets none of the criteria of a religion.
To quote from dictionary.com...
Atheism:
1. The doctrine or belief that there is no god.
2. Disbelief in the existence of a supreme being or beings.
What you are saying is that it does not meet the traditional or layman's concept of religion: it has no god, it has no set ritual that must take place or place of worship. That does not make the argument I or others have made invalid simply because you reject the definitions of both religion and Atheism provided by a secular source.