Can a priori knowledge exist without a god?

I am (1) new to the field of epistemology and (2) am not leading an answer with this question. In asking, I’m genuinely seeking the opinions of others on an argument I’ve recently encountered, as it’s played a big role in me reevaluating my views.

In a conversation with a religious friend of mine, they argued that if you believe in objective morality, you must also believe in some form of god as the source of objective moral laws. I know objective/mind-independent morality is not universally accepted in the first place, so in the interest of not derailing my question to a separate argument, I think I can rephrase it by replacing “objective morality” with “a priori knowledge” without losing much of the original point. That is, if a priori knowledge exists, which I think we will all agree it does, then there are innate facts about the universe that are independent of the mind and can be determined through rational thought alone. And if there exist innate facts about the universe, there must be some rational source of these innate facts.

This has been a really powerful idea that I haven’t been able to find a satisfying argument against. I guess the rebuttal here is that the universe just is the way it is because it is that way?

Anyways, I’d love to hear thoughts from really anyone on this. If I’m missing something obvious, or if you know of any good literature that addresses a form of these argument, please let me know. Thanks