Kept in the family for years and years it was auctioned off and later revealed to be a great historical find.  It happened to be a work by Archimedes who was near formulating calculus.  The reason the book survived for so many years is because a monk tried recycling the paper in order to use it to write down some prayers.  The monk scraped off the old ink, tore the pages in half then commenced to writing down something.

 http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20071006/mathtrek.asp

Now over a thousand years later guess which is paid more attention?  Are people frantically trying to find out what prayers the monk wrote?  Or are they working to uncover mathematical history?

Yup, nobody gives a crap about the prayers which will be forgotten but the work of the legendary Archimedes will be recorded in the history books for generations.

Perhaps it's a motivating metaphor.  A monk tries to erase progress by fading it into the background and covering it with a bunch of religious rhetoric.  The religion essentially becomes forgotten and replaced with the knowledge that was once suppressed.  Today creationists are trying to suppress science but like the events of a thousand years ago the creationist religious rhetoric will be pushed away in favor of the knowledge hidden underneath, and civilization will continue to progress.