Then why would God punish us for following his laws if they are just the laws of physics?

What about randomness and indeterminism? Is there a RNG driving our decisions at some level? If so where does the entropy come from?

Your question seems to be framed from a christian/abrahamic perspective, and is about God's omni-benevolence property. Unfortunately, I've yet to find a sufficiently simple/satisfactory explanation for that question.

In some flavors, the view is that there is no omni-benevolence (think in the tradition of Roman gods, for example), other views include the position that God is not an entity per se and that the notion of conflicts and the pursuit of what is "good" are inherent to our human condition (think Buddhism). If you're inclined to hear abrahamic leaning interpretations, the most closely aligned I've seen is the idea of "God draws straight lines w/ crooked sticks" (i.e. things we perceive as injustices are actually not, but we cannot comprehend the greater good because we are imperfect, biased things). See also karma and beliefs of reincarnation.

As for the origin of entropy, there's a lot of different takes, some rooted in philosophical thought (e.g. Spinoza-like takes that everything is deterministic and RNG is an illusion), some more spiritualistic (e.g. the panentheist idea that the universe is contained in God and that there may or may not be a non-deterministic force underlying it all)

Personally, I don't try to obtain explanations for every claim of every denomination (trying to nitpick apart the exact definition of God as per christianity, for example), since at some level one needs to acknowledge the metaphorical/allegorical aspects of various religious texts. I find it more interesting to take note of what concepts/interpretations appear in multiple denominations, there's a surprising amount of overlap when looking at individual concepts separately from lore.

Aside from all the stuff about deities, there's also quite a bit of literature on the morals side. I find those topics to be have a lot more overlap among religions, with self improvement usually being a central theme.

Anyways, if these kinds of debates interest you, I would recommend looking into pantheism and derivations. A lot of common questions have already been contemplated by various schools of thought. The wikipedia article might be a good place to start.

I have studied much of it and enjoy Joseph Campbell quite a bit, this discussion was focused on abrahamic religions though.

I find it interesting from a study of human behavior but overall all religions seem to lack rigor, they leave me unsatisfied due to their lack of even internal consistency, unlike mathematics and science.

Questions of determinism or free will are at the root of the mechanics of the universe and how a god might construct it or not. If you believe some god to have created all things then how can there be free will, that would denote something from the outside, some source of entropy not under the control of the creator. If it is under control of the creator the it is not true entropy and everything is determined ultimately by the creator.

> If you believe some god to have created all things then how can there be free will, that would denote something from the outside, some source of entropy not under the control of the creator. If it is under control of the creator the it is not true entropy and everything is determined ultimately by the creator.

Yeah, that's one way to look at it. There's also philosophies of what exactly is "self" and where its boundaries lie. One take is that if "God lives within us" then even if the universe is entirely deterministic, our decisions are governed by our own internal mechanisms (hence it's "free will" in the sense that we exclusively "own" those mechanisms, as opposed to them being influenced by outside factors). Another related view is the notion of relativity (i.e. "my reality is not your reality and definitions are inherently tied to each person's relative consciousness because without consciousness there are no definitions". This second notion cuts pretty close to the heart of why arguments between christians and atheists often break down: if they are talking about two completely distinct, mutually-exclusive realities (as it is perceived by each individual), there's really no way to reach a compromise.

There's a variety of interpretations of free will in that context, some simple and fatalist (e.g. immutable, inescapable fate), some quite a bit more creative ("God gave us free will because He loves us and He weeps when we use it to do bad things, yet everything is part of His grand plan"). I don't always see these interpretations as necessarily internally inconsistent. Some definitely are literally nonsensical or highly metaphorical, but some just take a bit more effort to appreciate. At times, it's an exercise in realizing whether I'm being overly pedantic over some philosophical minutia and extrapolating aversion to the entire belief system.

Rather than rejecting entire ideologies at face value, I enjoy looking for common ground between different ideologies or ways to reconcile ideas because religions come packaged w/ moral frameworks and I think the moral aspect is an ignored but key thing if one hopes to talk to religious people about controversial topics in a productive manner.