My faith is on hold.

[pocaracas]

In a believer's mind, atheists do develop those senses with the help of god. They just don't acknowledge the divine guide as their origin.

The philosophers of old (think Aquinas) would say that good is that which aligns with "natural law", where this "natural law" represents the actual purpose for which each being or structure is intended. A good example they like to trot out, nowadays, is sex - sex has the purpose of procreation; using it for anything else is bad or wrong. The pleasure that one feels from sex is just an evolved construct to impel individuals to actually have sex and, thus, procreate. Pleasure is not the purpose of sex.
God, as the originator of this natural law, defines what is good. If you, the atheist, follow natural law, regardless of how you came to such a following, you are doing good.

Then we can challenge that thinking by telling them to provide evidence that a god, any god, is the originator. If they try to cite the bible, then we can further challenge this by asking for physical proof via the Scientific Method. 

I know, I know, heads will spin, but really, if they are making that claim, they should be required to back it up, right?

They would argue that everything in the material world has features, like circularity, triangularity, wetness, luminosity, etc... and existence, or being... These features represent degrees of approximation to a conceptual perfect circle, triangle, wet(?), light(?), etc... existence/being.
Anything that exists, anything that is, is an instance of existence.
The bare existence itself, without the need for any actual thing existing, the concept of existence, is the starting point for everything that subsequently exists. This bare existence, this bare being (not a being or entity, but being itself from the verb to be), is what they call god.
Under this view, god (bare conceptual existence) is indeed the originator of all existing things.

When you think of the concept of a circle or a triangle, you may have a rough picture of a circle or triangle in your mind, but you also have a mathematical entity that is perfect in circularity, having no polygonal character at all, or a triangle with perfectly straight lines and point, unidimensional vertices. The concept of these features is perfect. Nothing in reality can achieve such perfection. No circle in reality can be made up of non polygonal parts - you're limited to the plank length.
Much like these concepts are perfect, god is also perfect existence, perfect being.
Since all other concepts exist, god also encompasses them.




The rub, to me, is at the start of this whole ordeal... Are these concepts, these features, are these metaphysical properties something that exist in the absence of a mind drawing patterns out of reality? Or are they the patterns that said mind forms upon investigating reality and extrapolating into perfect forms?
I lean to the second option... if this is a valid dichotomy.
This also touches an old question of "is mathematics invented or discovered?"
Is metaphysics invented or discovered?

I vote invented. Theists vote discovered.





Everything else ever claimed about any god should flow from this metaphysical realm.
Any god not grounded on it, just can't be real.