a: honestly think its mutar to be cruel to animals al pi hadin or otherwise
By using the word *cruel”, you manipulate the discussion. Why don’t you learn the sugya before deciding what is or isn’t muttar al pi din?
or b: simply don’t believe there is truth to any “isms” outside of torah hashkafah
That’s an important point. The vegetarians are not coming from a Torah perspective. They are coming from an “ism” perspective and trying to force as much of it into the Torah as they can, lo aleinu, and need to distort the sources in order to do so.
so even if vegetarians make good points, we cannot hold like them?
See my previous point; it’s academic, since their conclusions are not like the Torah.