Then what it is based on? I’ve asked for the citations, and they are still not forthcoming.
What you are appealing to is not “broader knowledge and considerations of general consistency”, but really a licence to be illogical. You’ve made no attempt to justify the possibility that one can cling to the Aggregates without giving rise to Self-views, and instead relied on ex cathedras.
Am I asking too much in hoping for a reasoning, instead of a mere ex cathedra? In all other suttas that characterise a problem as Mara’s bondage ( baddho mārassa), there does not appear to be any wriggle room for that problem to not lead to its sequel. The problems are clinging (SN 22.63), when conceiving (SN 22.64), when one is delighting (SN 22.65), when one is agitated (SA 21). Is it your position that it is also possible to conceive and not be reborn?
There was a reason why I cited earlier MN 38’s identification of delight with appropriation. It says -
Engaged as he is in favouring and opposing, whatever feeling he feels—whether pleasant or painful or neither-painful-nor-pleasant—he delights in that feeling, welcomes it, and remains holding to it. As he does so, delight arises in him. Now delight in feelings is clinging. With his clinging as condition, being comes to be; …
Is it your position that clinging is not a sufficient condition for Existence to arise?
Do the suttas demonstrate any significant interest in other types of agitation about identity that do not arise from Self-views?
Now, let’s take a look at your putative situation where one appropriates the Aggregates as self, but does not suffer the sequel of Self-views arising. Presumably, there will be some natural order underlying this special phenomenon. Taking again P = there is appropriation of the Aggregates as self, and Q = a Self-view arises, this order would be expressed as such -
P ⇒ ¬ Q
This in turn gives us -
Q ⇒ ¬ P
This implies that not-appropriating is a necessary condition for Self-view. Is this a reasonable outcome to allow, based on your opinion? How could such an oxymoron exist? The suttas are clear - Self-view has appropriation of the Aggregates as necessary condition, not non-appropriation.