CMV: People that believe in the concept of reincarnation should be treated as atheists

In the most basic sense, atheists believe that there is no evidence of an afterlife. Reincarnation beliefs are essentially this except instead of nothing there is just another life as an animal. I will go into more detail but I guess what I am saying is that you can effectively equate these beliefs as one in the same. I do not expect people to change their views but I would like to hear dissenting opinions and see if I can add to my own personal catalog of knowledge on reincarnation. <br>I will begin with a small anecdotal and hope we can go from there: I had two friends that were theists and an atheist friend. The two theists were each other's boyfriends and this atheist was my boyfriend, he tried to argue with them about the silliness of their religious beliefs but they used the common cop-out that was their beliefs and they couldn't be proven wrong and if we wanted to know what their beliefs were we could read the holy text in question and discover for ourselves. This was frustrating for me and my boyfriend because we had read said holy texts and knew that what they were saying was not what was actually in them. Eventually, we believed we could prove them wrong because they had said something incorrect. The boyfriend said something about how him and his boyfriend could do whatever they wanted because they already lived their past lives and lived them correctly and so now they could do whatever. I jumped on this because that is not actually the belief of any religion that has reincarnation as a tenet, it is a very modern idea and the only one is the way they phrased it is actually merely an interpretation of karma that is found in the Satanic Bible as "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law; Do nothing unto others that you would not have them do unto you, because the law of karma will take care of the rest." This epiphany for me then caused me to ask many more questions about reincarnation and I discovered that many of the tenets about reincarnation are very similar across religions. In Hinduism, this is called samsara and the goal is to escape the wheel of reincarnation and finally reach freedom from rebirths into nirvana after achieving moksha. In Buddhism, this is more of a simple idea of rebirth. In Jainism, this again is samsara and the goal is to escape the cycle and reach moksha. A common concept here is the idea of karma. I started to realize then that these religions all have one thing in common: the concept that the soul or consciousness is renewed after death and transmigrates into a new being. Death does not actually occur, the soul continues to live on after death and is reborn. I realized that this makes the idea of an afterlife irrelevant to the discussion of if one is an atheist or not. <br><br>Reincarnation and karma are key to the idea of an afterlife in these religions in the same way karma is key to the concept of Satanism and the idea of rebirth. Once I had discovered this, I realized then that I had discovered something deeper than just the idea of karma, I discovered that all these religions that believe in reincarnation first and foremost believe that the concept of death is irrelevant. If death is irrelevant, then should we not consider the idea of an afterlife irrelevant as well? If we consider the idea of an afterlife irrelevant, then the concept of reincarnation and an afterlife begins to look more and more similar to the idea of being an atheist. This led me to wonder if these religions that believe in reincarnation are actually more similar to atheism than one might think. If we look at the hysterical history of the world and realize that nearly every religion has contributed to strife, war, and generally negative beliefs and negative actions. I think then it is safe to say that nearly all the people of the world who do not believe in God or an afterlife are generally considered atheists. Therefore if we consider that the majority of people who do not believe in the idea of an afterlife are atheist, then that means that religions that do not believe in the idea of an afterlife should also be considered atheist, even if they do not believe in the concept of death or the transmigration of the soul. The fact that the most basic definition of an atheist is the lack of belief in an afterlife should mean that these religions that do not believe in afterlives should be considered atheist. <br><br>This is probably one of my longer posts but I really think this is a very interesting idea and I hope you guys will consider it and also tell me about other philosophies or religions that I might find interesting, thank you for reading this if you did and for participating in the discussion if you do. <br><br>Edit: You guys have blown me away with all the feedback! Thank you all so much this is what I love about this subreddit. There are so many different views and perspectives here to learn from, I'm so happy!