The tree of knowledge of good and evil is symbolic of law, which includes moral law. Law teaches us good and evil behavior. Law uses negative reinforcement; punishment; and positive reinforcement; at-a-boy, to make the lesson; knowledge of good and evil, sink in. Law is not natural to the animal brain, and causes a type of brain repression.
When memory is created, aspects of the limbic system, in the core of the brain, add emotional tags to memory, as it is written to the cerebral matter. Our memory is a mixture of sensory content and emotional tags. Our strongest memories; glory days, will have the strongest feelings.
This natural writing process is useful to the animal brain, since the attached feeling allows the animal to act upon the feeling tag, without having to think about the content. For example, if the animal saw food they once ate, and this memory has a positive feeling, they will feel the positive feeling, and eat. If there was no feeling tag, they would have to infer from the sensory content of the previous memory, with reason not an strong animal skill. The emotional tag, cuts to the chase, quickly.
Getting back to law. Law is a unique form of memory, in that to know law, you need to know both the evil side, to avoid evil, and the good side to do good. Law is like a coin, with two sides, but it is one thing. The result is law memory, becomes tagged with two conflicting feeling tags. This unnatural situation creates a problem for the animal brain. For example, how should an animal react to a food item, that feels tasty and scary at the same time? The conflicting feelings will make the animal unable to act. They will waste time and energy circling; indecision. Moral neutrality has one tag, based on the circumstances.
These two conflicting feeling tags, created by law, is not good for the energy economy of the brain. It causes inhibitions that can dam the natural neural energy flow; repression. The brain deals with the repression, by making one side of the coin conscious; good feeling, while making the other side of the coin unconscious; bad feeling. However, since these two sides of the law coin are parts of one coin, the unconscious aspects is animated, at the same time, as the conscious side, but unconsciously. It forms a shadow subroutine called Satan. Satan is real and is based on brain software.
As an example, the Salem Witch Trials, in Puritan Salem, Massachusetts, had self righteous people, who thought they were doing good by the law, doing very evil things, in name of the law. The felt self righteous; conscious good. This animated the whole coin, causing the repressed dark side of law to become active; compelled to use the dark side of the law, in the name of good. This dynamics is why the preacher who tries to be perfect, may ends up doing evil things. The pervert priest who abuses someone, may have thought his intent was good, based on relative morality of love=sex.
The more law you create, the more potential will be created in the unconscious compulsive side of the law coin. The repressed dark side ends with a larger energy budget, due to more repressed content. As an example, in American politics, the left is more likely to make more and more laws. The accumulating dark side subroutine, accounts for the fear within the leftist snow flakes, as well as the compulsions of the radicals; ends justifies means or good justified by evil.
Relative morality is an attempt to make the dark side, conscious. This can be useful in terms of a therapy. It can reduce the potential in the unconscious, by allowing it to express itself in a controlled manner; psycho-drama. However, if this is done unconsciously, with no therapeutic value in mind, the increased compulsive behavior, can make the problem worse, since it can compound the need for even more law, as well as induce self righteous defensiveness, with a dark unconscious twist.
Faith is different. It is a way to get back to natural. It adds a single emotional tag to each memory based on the feelings at the time. It is not predefined, by culture, as a binary using law and reinforcement, but by the unconscious; inner self, as a unique event. This reduces the polarization of feelings, and causes the Satan subroutine; side of the coin, to get weaker.