The basis of Mormonism is no more illegitimate than the basis of any relgion

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Mormonism is also a lot more recent and therefore easier to debunk/dismiss. So yeah....

this is basically correct.  much of the Book of Mormon is demonstrably and uncontroversially untrue (despite the best efforts of apologist PhDs at Brigham Young).  meanwhile time provides a lot more obfuscation and mystification that the OT and NT can rely on, with only the more fantastic claims, such as the Ark, subject to falsification.

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jmf, there were plenty of non-Mormon Christian sects (sect isn't even the right word - the Christian establishment in a vast part of the country) that echoed in their own way the sentiments expressed by Brigham Young and others on blacks, at times not even without a cosmological/theological addendum to it (blacks descended from a separate black Adam, etc).