I was somewhat taken aback recently when I found myself on a list of "kinder, gentler atheists"--most of them women--compiled by a religious historian attempting to distinguish between socially acceptable atheism and the presumably mean, hard-line atheism expounded by such demonic figures as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett. This nasty versus nice dichotomy is wholly an invention of believers who are under the mistaken impression that atheism is a religion in need of a good schism.

The list of "kinder" atheists was compiled for USA Today by Stephen Prothero, an On Faith panelist and professor of religion at Boston University and author of "Religious Literacy" (2007), a lively and incisive account of Americans' ignorance about religion in general and their own religious history. Pleased as I was to find myself on a list in the company of such other spirited atheists as Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, author of the witty, recently published "36 Arguments for The Existence of God: A Work of Fiction," and Jennifer Michael Hecht, author of "Doubt: A History" (2003), it is nevertheless slightly insulting to find your name used not only to place female atheists in a special category but as a foil for a mythical enemy known as the New Atheists. The latter consist, in Prothero's view, mainly of Angry White Men who believe that all religious people are stupid and that "the only way forward is to educate the idiots and flush away the poison."

I don't mean to pick on Prothero, whom I greatly respect as a scholar of religion (this must be the sort of observation that he considers kinder and gentler), but his piece is a perfect example of all of the distortions of atheism cherished by anti-atheists.

Susan Jacoby, a regular On Faith panelist, is the author of nine books, including the bestselling "The Age of American Unreason." Program director of the Center for Inquiry-New York City, a rationalist think tank, Jacoby is an independent scholar whose work now focuses on American intellectual history, the author began her writing career as a reporter for The Washington Post.

Jacoby's "Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism" (2004), was hailed in The New York Times as an "ardent and insightful work" that "seeks to rescue a proud tradition from the indifference of posterity." Named a notable nonfiction book of 2004 by The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times, Freethinkers was cited in England as one of the outstanding international books of the year by the Times Literary Supplement and The Guardian. Freethinkers was featured in an interview on NOW with Bill Moyers.

Jacoby's previous books, include "Moscow Conversations" (1972), based on her experiences in Moscow from 1969 to 1971. Among her other books are "Wild Justice: The Evolution of Revenge" (Harper & Row), a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1984, and "Half-Jew: A Daughter's Search for Her Family's Buried Past" (Scribner, 2000).

Jacoby has been a contributor for more than 25 years, on topics including law, religion, medicine, aging, women's rights, political dissent in the Soviet Union, and Russian literature, to a wide range of periodicals and newspapers. Her articles and essays have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Washington Post Book World, Los Angeles Times Book Review, Newsday, Harper's, The Nation, Vogue, The American Prospect, Mother Jones, and the AARP Magazine, among other publications. They have been reprinted in numerous anthologies of columns and magazine articles.