Ardy said
One thing that most theists seem to agree on is is the topic of free will.  For some reason god insists upon the existence of free will in his creation.  However,  the existence of free will would be meaningless if god made moral decisions obvious… which is to say, if god provided all the proof that atheists commonly demand…. Then “belief in god” would be as challenging as belief in gravity.  Hence “free will” would be rendered as meaningless as belief in gravity..  And so, god remains hidden and obscure…. Waiting for humans to make correct choices on insufficient evidence. And preparing eternal hell for those who make the wrong choice. The seldom considered question is:  WHY?  

I  mean…. Would you leave your dog home alone with  a freshly roasted chicken sitting within his reach? And then torture the dog for making the wrong choice?   What would that accomplish?

Likewise… what is god’s objective in giving us “free will” while largely obscuring the information we might use to make correct choices?   Then consigning us to eternal and exquisite suffering if we make incorrect choices? What is the point of such a sadistic creation; and why is it “necessary”?

  

It seems to me this isn’t a particularly accurate characterization of thesists as a group. For one thing, Luther rejected the notion of free will–at least he rejected it as playing any role in salvation–sola gratia, De Servo Arbitrio, and all that. Likewise, Calvin famously argued against free will, and the reformed protestants in general still follow him in this–at least as far as I am aware. 

Even among theists who do insist on free will, there are a number of important strands that don’t view belief in God as playing the role in salvation you characterize theists as holding–so for example in Catholic doctrine, as articulated at Vatican I, the belief that God exists is considered a preamble of faith–a truth of reason that can be established with certainty by reason alone, prior to any act of faith. Or, for another example, Rahner held that people can at once explicitly deny that God exists and be sincere and convinced atheists while still having, what we might call, an implicit belief in God–because human experience is so thoroughly soaked with the transcendent, we can respond to God without any conscious realization that it is God we are responding to, and we can know him without him being a conscious object of our knowledge–sort of the way the limit of your field of vision is always part of every view you take in, and yet not a direct object of your sight.  

With all that said, I do agree that the very notion of faith as the beginning of salvation (which is not necessarily a feature of theism, but does run deep in Christianity) is problematic, at least if the only alternative to salvation is eternal conscious punishment. 

Stephen said
God apparently wants me to freely choose him.  For him to openly reveal himself would be a form of coercion. 

  

Yeah, I think there is a really basic, but fairly common confusion going on here. Clearly showing me what you want me to do isn’t coercion; it is a prerequisite to my being able to choose or refuse to do what you want me to do. After all, Jn 8:32. 

Look at kids–I don’t punish my kids for failing to read my mind and not doing the thing I wanted them to do though I never made clear what I wanted them to do. I punish them when I was clear about what I expected and they decided to defy me. If I wasn’t clear about what I expected, that is on me; if they knew perfectly well what I expected and decided to not to do it, that is on them and their free will. Tell my kids what I demand of them isn’t taking away their freedom; it is empowering them to make an informed choice for which they are responsible. What is taking away their freedom is failing to explain what I do and don’t expect, and forcing them to choose without the information necessary to choose well. They aren’t free to obey or disobey if they don’t know what the rules are that they are expected to obey. 

Failure to believe is only intelligible as a culpable fault if we start with the presumption that God has made it so clear that he wants us to believe certain things that one can’t sincerely doubt those things such that disbelief necessarily becomes a willful refusal to submit to him.