Oomis, I don’t think anyone tried to say that talmud Torah k’neged kulom refers to an exemption from other mitzvos. Ben Levi understood it to refer to the primacy of talmud Torah, and leveled an (somewhat overreaching) attack against MO for rejecting the concept. CAD then misread his statement to allow eating cheeseburgers (and I misread his wording to be kefirah).
Let’s chill out folks. There’s a lot more fighting between MO and charedi here in the CR than there is in real life.
For example, I frequent a beis medrash where one can find people wearing shtreimlach, knitted kippot, black velvet yarmulkas and fedoras, leather yarmulkas, and baseball caps (although not all on the same day – the shtreimlach are on Shabbos and the caps during the week), all davening and learning together. The people respect each other for their strengths, despite having different garb, outlooks, and occupations.
A chat room is merely a forum for ideas, but we don’t see each others’ chesed, we don’t know know how much time and effort the others put into learning and davening, etc. So naturally, we’ll see more disagreement than appreciation. But in real life, at least in my experience, things are not nearly so “black and white”.