The "managing force" behind something like reincarnation doesn't have to be a God at all, Grishka. It could just be the same set of very consistent natural laws that govern everything else that occurs around us. The laws of Nature, in other words.

The Buddhist teachings, for instance, are strong on the idea of reincarnation as a form of natural spiritual evolution toward greater perfection, but I find absolutely nothing in the Buddhist teachings that proposes the existence of a ruling deity. The Buddhists are interested in the process of the evolution of the mind, the body, and the spirit....they are not interested in proposing the existence of a managing ruler being of some kind to explain it all somehow.

It strikes me that those who want to link reincarnation to a God want to do so for this reason: they've already decided that having a God is a stupid idea, so they'd very much like to connect any other spiritual notion they come across WITH that God, so as to be able to criticize it more thoroughly. ;-)   "Guilt by association" in other words...

It ain't that simple! The world of spiritual investigation does not necessarily fall into the little box of prejudice you have built to contain it, but your prejudices fit into that little box perfectly, and inside that little box is the little ugly graven image of the "God" you imagine in your mind when you scoff at the idea of there being a "God". If there is a God...and I'm not saying there is....then he, she or it probably barely even resembles the image of whatever the heck you are imagining in your head when you mouth the word "God"....and it probably doesn't resemble what the religious people are imagining in their heads either.

It's the words themselves that mislead people. People first decide that the word has a specific meaning. They then force reality around them inside the boxes OF those specific meanings. They develop tiny limited notions of things based solely on the definitions they have given to the words they commonly use and stand like an ant in front of a great work of art, not even knowing what it is...and then talk about it as if they knew what it was! Hilarious. There are no words sufficient in human language to describe the things people are talking about here, and there never will be. Words simply won't get you there. But they're all you can do across your little keyboard here, aren't they? Well, fine...but they still won't get you there, and you'll still be an ant standing in front of a magnificent painting going "bla, bla, bla" and saying to all the other ants: "That is just a flat surface with a bunch of colors and marks on it. I have measured it, and its dimensions are exactly ---------. Its weight is ----------.   The colors on it are -----------. The materials in it are ---------. It has no intrinsic meaning, no purpose, and it happened by some sort of accidental natural process which we are investigating."

And the other ants will mostly nod sagely, write down all the technical details, and marvel at the brilliance of science. And they will remain wordbound, self-satisfied, and ignorant in the face of something they have not even a glimmer of understanding of. And they'll give it a name! ;-) And then they will imagine that they know what it is, because they can mouth the name...and they will all feel quite secure, and they'll all still be just a bunch ants.

As for the religious ants, most of them will do something equally silly and fairly similar...although they will at least recognize that whatever that painting is, it's not devoid of meaning. In recognizing that, they will, I think, have at least a glimmer of dawning awareness. And that's better than nothing at all.