If "God" sits back and takes no involvement in man's affairs, then he willingly permits evil to take place, willingly stands by why children are killed, raped, abused and tortured. If God does get involved in man's affairs, then there is no free will. There is only a pseudo free will, a bit of limited freedom encased in boundaries that man must not cross.
The free will argument falls down when you consider "God" in the classical sense, i.e. as a being of which we are an image.
God must therefore be something else. Something that some people are not telling us. Something different to that which is portrayed in the bible and other works. We must stop deliberating about God in that sense. We must approach the puzzle with an open mind and an open heart and not allow other men to pre-shape our notions of who/what God actually is. The bible contains many secrets and some truth are encoded within it and others are written in plain sight and yet are cryptic to the point that the average dumbed down uneducated "Christian" will never see or understand them.
Even the opening lines of the bible are a cryptic secret being told, a very great secret. They are NOT talking about the creation of the universe.
How can one begin to debate things like free will and whether there is or is not a God if one doesn't first know what the bible is and what secrets are held within it?