Hello firewns:
I went through your post twice to be sure I understand correctly what you are getting at.
True, strictly speaking, we do NOT need a father and a mother to attain a human bhava – as you say, “A human bhava (existence) is grasped at the cuti-patisandhi moment…” I somehow anticipated that the objection, in this case, as it happens, from you, will come up. I will explain:
As is often the case ‘the villain of the piece’ is the distinction between bhava and jati. Even we on here sometimes interchange the two terms, taking it for granted that the distinction is understood IN THE CONTEXT OF WHAT IS BEING STATED. To clarify: jati or a series of jatis is what constitutes a human (or animal) bhava IN ITS MANIFESTATION, for which a mother and a father will be necessary, but the root cause of beings finding themselves in the human or animal realm, the seed, is the bhava as the indispensable precursor to that series of jatis. To wit: what will be the use of all the zygotes brought into existence by the union of (even if not-as-yet) ‘mother and father’, potential jatis, all over the planet if no gandhabbas (the result of one’s abhisankara, gati etc up to that point in time) were not there? Or, put still another way, we DO need a father and a mother for the FULFILLMENT or the working out of our human bhava because that is made up of a series of jatis.
So yes ‘I believe that we do not need a father and a mother to have a human bhava.’ We are at one on this, but now you can see why I said what I did.
I ,as usual, HOPE I have been clear.
As to miccha ditthi, I never had a problem with any of them. They struck me as reasonable, even inevitable in the grand scheme of things, the first time I came across them. Thank you, firewns.
much Metta