The thing with atheists today and in the 20th century is that they are plagued with a philosophical world view that is in its essence skepticism. They all think they are thinking independently however in fact they are thinking in accordance with how Kant saw the world, Kant was revolutionary in western philosophy because what is often called his copernicus discovery is in that :
Reality is not informing us, we are informing reality, seeing is not believing, believing is seeing.
The question that should be asked to an atheist should be; Is your rejection of the existence of a creator due to a absence of evidence, or is it due to philosophical and moral objections.
Contrary to the empiricist, no, you do not have to measure and observe something in order to confirm it's existence.
The abstract world is not material, consciousness is immaterial, you can't measure it, smell it, touch it, taste it, hear it, see it, yet it exists.
Plato's philosophy was more on the lines of : It is impossible for us to doing all of this, if it weren't for a previous original source of knowledge and wisdom. He believed that they (knowledge and wisdom, arts) had a material existence.
Aristotle was similar except he was a moderate realist, believing knowledge and concepts did not have a material existence, but rather a immaterial existence.
All knowledges relate to each other (interdisciplinary) , this is how knowledge was seen in most historical civilizations including Islam, its only in modern civilization that we see everything as illusionary coincidences. Atheists always ramble about logic, logic is about metaphysics, a logician will always arrive at the questions :
Why is there a world?
Where do we come from?
What happens after we go?
But what is commonly known as logic, is not something formidable, it too has it's limits and therefore cannot be relied upon. Logic breaks down in the quantum world. The double slit experiment drastically changes our philosophical interpretation of the world and what existence means.
The double slit experiment :
As seen in the explanation, the very foundation of our bodies (atoms) behave in ways that defy logic and common sense, therefore why is it logical to become an atheist, and why is it illogical to believe in a creator whom Muslims believe is immaterial, but yet as stated in Ashari theology, is neither 'connected nor disconnected' from his creation?
If God was to be seen and connected to creation, that would make him corruptible and incorruptible. If he was separated and it would mean God has a separate existence (deism
?).
However God being neither both, forces the mind to arrive at a place where the rational mind breaks down, as it now breaks down when we must confirm that atoms behave in a complete Irrational way. These conclusions only satisfy the Muslim because the Muslim who knows his deen understands that the rational faculties are given to us by Allah, and as with other gifts, such as our 5 senses, our minds also have limits.
Why is Islam unique? Because we don't affirm in order to elucidate the existence of Allah, Most of the time it's negation, like in surah ikhlas. Yet everytime a discovery in the quantum world is made known to us common folk, it only seems to coincide with our belief in Allah.
So the question to the atheists is, are you genuine atheists or are you nomanilists?
This is how they'll respond to the OP's question :