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Notes -
I think the problem here is that the list of things about distinctive about Mormonism that are interesting, unique, and cool are very tightly connected to the list of things that are distinctive about Mormonism that are obviously false. Joseph Smith taught that the Book of Mormon came from a pre-Colombian civilisation of ethnically Middle Eastern Christians in America which had access to Eurasian crops, livestock, and metallurgical knowledge. No archaeological evidence for such a civilisation exists, and someone who has received a secular education would know that. And Mormonism doesn't have the political power to put docents in the Egyptian gallery at the Met to point out the drawings of enslaved Jews and similar historical fudges.
It is still just about possible for an intelligent person to believe the historical claims made by mainstream Judaism or Christianity without rejecting their secular education wholesale - particularly if you treat 1 Genesis as allegorical, as e.g. the Catholic hierarchy does. The hardest part is the Passover Narrative. (Hyksos=Jews is consistent with the Genesis story from Abraham to Joseph and the migration from Canaan to Egypt, and with the wandering in the desert under Moses and eventual return to Canaan, but the Hyksos were not enslaved and were violently expelled rather than fleeing in the night). Historical Nephites and Lamanites and the Book of Mormon as an inspired translation of ancient Nephite scripture is harder to reconcile with secular scholarship than a historical Exodus, and far harder to reconcile than historical Jesus and the New Testament as inspired accounts of his teachings by his contemporaries.
If the Book of Mormon is what it appears to be to secular scholars (a mediocre King James Bible fanfic by a man steeped in but apostate from 19th century American Protestantism, with a side order of Freemasonry) then Mormonism is nothing.
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