I dunno if you should pay too much attention to what I say about reincarnation; I am not an expert, and can only tell you what I think based on my somewhat unique background.  I know very little about Pythagoras except his theorem and that he started a mystical Greek philosophical school.

There is a story in the Buddhist tradition of a Prince who was very much into the hunt, and spent all his time hunting and killing animals, and which the Buddha indicated, because of the Prince's desires, would probably be reborn a tiger.  Interestingly he is reported to not have said so in so many words but just with gestures.  The Buddha was not much into animal rebirths -- this is much more a Hindu idea, and I have no idea whatever what the Pythagoreans thought.

Pretty much everyone around here, including the Communists, "believes" in reincarnation, in the sense that the idea is part of the furniture and just taken for granted.  When you drill down, however, one finds differing theories and some skepticism.

Personally I am very skeptical, and get more and more so as I age.

First one knows that the teaching originated in India, probably as far back as the Harrappa cultures (sometimes spelled with just one "r").  Unlike many of the features of modern Hinduism, such as casts and the panoply of deities, the teaching of reincarnation is common to all the religious traditions originating in India, and hence one can conclude it was probably there before the Aryan invasions (which brought in the Indo-European deities).

This is not to say the idea that we are reborn (the technically correct term -- "reincarnation" has to do with coming back to earth as a new incarnation, not as a new person) has not appeared elsewhere.  It is found as a speculation in Greek philosophy in such people as Plato, but was not as far as I know a belief in Greek religion.  Some assert that the Greeks got the idea from India, but records of such Greek thinking predate Alexander, so I doubt it -- more likely the Greek philosophers thought it up on their own.

As found in popular thinking nowadays, both in India and in the Buddhist areas, the teaching can be seen to have two components -- belief in karma and belief in the immortal soul.  Karma, as we all know, is the tendency to accumulate brownie points for good behavior and bad marks for bad behavior in a cosmic account.  Expressed in a more sophisticated way, what it means is that our behavior changes us (our soul) as we live, for the good and for the bad, and this accumulates and eventually, as a part of the universe's cause and effect processes, leads to good or bad "luck."   They also lead to rebirth in a better or worse position than one's present life.

What is seen to happen when one dies is the body is gone, but the soul or spirit persists, and desperately desire ("grasps") to get back what it just lost -- sensations mainly (hence the "hungry ghost").  The positive karma one has gives one somehow a certain power to influence one's rebirth (which is pretty much the only way to escape the disembodied -- ghostly -- state) -- to something desirable (maybe a heaven) or something undesirable (maybe a hell) but more likely to another human -- again to high or low state.  The widespread notion of being reborn an animal is also considered possible, but not likely since once having been a human there are very few who have any desire at all along these lines, and it is our desire that motivates the entire process (sentient animals are, however, seen as a virtually inexhaustible source of new human souls).

Unlike the Hindu approach, where this is seen as immortality, the Buddha saw it as a horrible trap -- called Samsara -- where one is trapped in a cycle of suffering -- dying is suffering, being born is suffering, life is suffering (I tend to see life, even the painful parts, differently).  Therefore he is reported to have discovered the way out -- through enlightenment, which is achieved through a life of meditation and goodness (basically by becoming a Buddhist monk -- which doesn't guarantee enlightenment but which is pretty much necessary).  Most Buddhists would like instead to go to one of the Buddhist heavens.

Enlightenment nowadays is seen as peace of mind, happiness, understanding of the human condition, and things like that, but the early conception was a supernatural awareness and level of knowledge that included memory of past lives.  In such a state one can die at any time and enter Nirvana -- often rendered "blessedness." Some see it as personal extinction, or maybe something like the Transcendentalist concept of rejoining the cosmic ocean of mind, or maybe just entering a special heaven where one's karma doesn't eventually run out.  Portrayals of it for children usually depict a (to me boring) state of people sitting around meditating.

Now some problems.  First, there is the convincing and I think very true Buddhist teaching of "no self." All of the above picture sees us as having souls, or selves, but Buddhist teaching from the very earliest tells us that this is an illusion.  Even mindful meditation can persuade those who know to look for it that there is no soul, no self, but only a process not unlike a burning candle or a wave on the water, or an electro-magnetic particle/wave duality we call a photon.

Then there is the modern scientific understanding that what we call mind is really just brain activity.  This concept has its own problem (the source of what are called "qualia" or sensations and emotions as we experience them -- the brain doubtlessly produces them but what is it that experiences what the brain generates).  Still, that problem aside, how does all this survive the destruction of brain (we see that mind tend to disappear even while the brain lives if it has some degenerative disease).  Where does the mind go -- into space as a disembodied ghost? -- the possible mechanism is an absurdity.

The general view in Vietnam is that there are ghosts everywhere -- spirits so evil they have not been able to be reborn (although why not one of the hells?).  These are frightening and malevolent and not even mentioned out loud.  There are also good spirits wandering around who for some reason haven't been reborn -- shrines can be seen here and there for these, to give them comfort.  Ghosts tend to be restricted to where they can travel at normal human speeds, so, except maybe for Pure Land Buddhists, we are reborn on the earth and the ghosts on the earth are those of dead humans.

One problem is expressed in the question, "Where is Mozart." The observation is that each of the world's great artists -- composers, authors, painters, etc., is noticeable for a clear "voice" that (at least in Mozart's case) is readily recognized from the very beginning.  Even though we are told we forget past lives, if the spirit persists, one would think that Mozart would by now have been reborn several times, further enriching our musical heritage, but we see nothing recognizable as such.

My main problem though is simply lack of evidence.  There is no credible evidence for ghosts, nor for past memories.  Unfortunately study of such phenomena, if there is any reality there, has been contaminated by air-heads and frauds and parents eager to make a lot of money from their precocious children by feeding them stuff.  As a result, I don't think it is possible for there to be an objective study, and serious scientists simply don't.  The few who do and who get results are soon denounced and debunked anyway, maybe properly.

There is also déjà-vu. There are efforts to "explain" this wide-spread phenomenon, and I think most of the explanations are valid most of the time, but it is impossible to rule out the possibility that a residue really are memories of past lives.

A lump came to my throat reading about the reception of the refugees in Germany and Austria.  The Hungarians should be ashamed.

It is true that most of these are probably "Economic" immigrants -- meaning their lives are in no terrible danger and the main motive is to improve their lives and the lives of their children.  I just do not see anything wrong with that.

Germany and Austria are getting an influx of young ambitious people willing to take risks.  The saying is, "When the going gets tough the tough get up and go." A nation can only be helped by an influx of such people, especially as their work will pay the pensions of the otherwise aging German population.

Of course there are cultural differences and there will be acculturation problems, and a few of the Muslims coming in will be dangerous radicals.  They will deal with them and end up a richer, more vibrant, wealthier, more powerful and certainly more admirable society.

Well this discussion has had the benefit of showing me that miracles cannot be accepted.  I tended to say they are unlikely and need evidence, but actually we have to ask what would constitute a miracle.  God coming down and curing my medical problems might be called a miracle, but in a deeper sense it would be no such thing -- it would be God coming down and curing my medical problems.  It would seem God is a better doctor than those I've been seeing.

This is perhaps playing word games, as the sense of "miracle" is not something without cause, but where the cause is divine or spiritual and not mundane or human or physical.  Well in that case I don't think miracles occur.  It implies the existence of God, something that is counter to logic (another subject altogether) so that I am persuaded strongly he doesn't exist but is a human notion out of wishful thinking.  Given no God, then, no miracles.  Still, that begs the issue here, which is more of a "show me" situation -- if there are miracles, they don't get believed unless there is damn good evidence there is no other explanation, and even then they don't get believed because it could be simply a trick where I don't see the trick or some event I don't understand.  

There is also a theological problem with miracles -- they imply God interfering with the working of the world as He designed it.  This is certainly problematic -- the artist (in this case a perfect, infallible artist) going back and retouching his work.  And then there is the question of why God works miracles to prevent some evil or other (we assume that is his purpose) and yet allows all sorts of horrid things to go on and on and on -- like babies dying in the gutter.  Once we say God corrects some evils with special dispensations, we make God into an unjust, arbitrary, kind-of circus magician.

Skepticism is healthy, cynicism is not.  Skepticism is to demand evidence for things that are less than obviously true, and never accept things because they are "human." The universe is what it is regardless of our wishes and fantasies.

Anything is possible, that does not mean anything is real, nor does it mean we should accept explanations for things that do not fit with reality.  In such cases the appropriate response is just that we don't know.  I think miracles are impossible by definition -- anything we think is a miracle either has a more mundane explanation or is just a sample of technology we don't understand.  It is possible Santa Clause could pop into existence in my garage (according to what the quantum people tell us), and if he did so it would not be a miracle but just a quantum event.  If Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, it was not a miracle but just his ability to maneuver the universe to make him live -- a modern doctor might have been able to as well, or a future doctor.

All that said, the wise course is to withhold belief and wait for further evidence.  Odds are overwhelming a debunking will come along -- tricks and misunderstandings and delusions and pious frauds are far more common than violations of physics.

It is conceivable Jesus Christ could have gone unnoticed -- there were lots of miracle workers and would-be Messiahs about and the whole topic must have been something of a bore.  My attitude is that absence of evidence is not proof of absence, but it is damn good evidence.  The thing is that extraordinary claims (and the whole Jesus story surely is extraordinary) require extraordinary evidence, not just rationalization of absence of evidence.

The reason people persist in such irrational belief has to do with meme theory, at least this seems the most readily acceptable idea.  Once an idea gets hold -- and it can do so for reasons outside rationality (emotional appeal, childhood indoctrination, etc.), our minds leap at anything that allows keeping the notion in spite of anything -- at least some people's minds do -- hence Bigfoot, lake monsters, flying saucers, hollow earths, alien abductions, ghosts, demons, visions of the Virgin Mary, miracles, and on and on and on.

The religious memes also have a cute trick -- they make what is called "faith" into a virtue, sometimes near the paramount virtue, rather than the vice of superstition and believing what we want rather than what the evidence supports.  It is all feel nice stuff, and for sure believing makes us feel great.  I'm more interested in truth than joy, although I'll take joy when it doesn't require that I lie to myself.

Yes, Dorothy, there are truths in all religions -- this is probably unavoidable about any belief system of enough complexity.  I would also assert that that coin has an obverse -- that there are falsehoods in all religions.

One can reach one of two (at least two) conclusions from this.  One might be that religion in general is a waste of time and worrying about religious truth and untruth are even more a waste of time.  The other might be that revealing truth is not a valid function of religion, but instead religion serves other human needs, probably deriving from our need to serve and worship and be comforted by whatever straw we can grasp -- derived ultimately by the natural selection of our evolution.

When one gets deep into a study of some place and time in history, it becomes clear we know really very little of what actually happened and even less of the reasons why.  That is no reason, however, to fill in the gaps in our knowledge with fantasies and guesses and fictions.  When we die what we know dies with us, so the vast majority of human memory is lost forever, and we only have the little that gets written down, and it is filled with biases and omissions and exaggerations and so on.

People of the future will have a slightly, but only slightly, better time of it studying us than we have studying what went on in, say, ancient Rome.  We do have a somewhat more objective discipline of reporting history, but there is still plenty written that is untrue or misleading, and of course we will leave film and so on, but selection effects here too will prevent anything like a completely accurate record.

Thinking about it, it is amazing we know as much as we know and can see an overall picture regardless.  I would only say a great deal of care and humility is called for if we are to draw lessons from this history.