This is Infants on Thrones.

Minnesot.

Minnesot.

Hey listeners, it's Jake.

Hey listeners, it's Jake.'m going to nerd out a bit here if that's okay for those

who like me have a slightly unhealthy fascination with arguments again slash

apologetics for the historicity of the Book of Mormon

there's been a tasty exchange of blog post going back and forth about it on

pathios but first let me give some background for those who are unfamiliar with the term

apologetics is a field of Christian theology that makes or attempts to make

depending on how successful you see them as being reason-based arguments for Christian faith.

It's a tradition that goes all the way back to the early days of Christianity,

from Paul the Apostle to Thomas Aquinas up through the present day.

And since it has its fair share of doctrines with a controversial

relationship to common knowledge, Mormonism has its own wild and woolly history of

apologists trying to make reason-based appeal for Mormon

beliefs which I might take a stab at recounting in a future episode if people are

interested. Anyway over the past few decades one topic that has occupied a significant portion of Mormon

apologetic efforts has been arguing for the Book of Mormon as a real

historical document of real people who really lived in a really real reality

somewhere in the Americas.

From what I've observed, there's an interesting cycle that takes place in the dusty

...