What is your proof that the universe exists outside of your own consciousness?

I don't but youre welcome to believe whatever you want its a free country!

I'm an agnostic atheist. Sounds like you are too

By seeking 'points and authorities' in an effort to prove or disprove something that can be neither, we devaluate ourselves as thinking, reasoning creatures. I agree that there isn't much difference between faith and faith in non-faith, functionally. Grasping at either theological or scientific rooted answers as though they're the only eligible sources for use in deciding whether gods or like invisible entities exist, I believe to be distracting at best and limiting at worst.

Those, for example, who believe (place faith) that science validates what is good sense, in my view, overlook which came first. I think it is sense that validates good science. Personal disbelief is firmly rooted in reasoning. Human reasoning occurs beyond the limitations of theology and science. We are validated by our very existence at the top of known inhabitants of this planet and, albeit underdemonstrated, best examples of evolving reasoning capacity. Without us, as a kind, abstracts like religion or science wouldn't exist.

Theologies, particularly male dominated ones, imposed many destructive, substitutional sets of answers about hows and whys of life little understood at the dawn of our existence. Gods of the gaps they've been accurately called. The Renaissance revolution ushering in more independence of thought and rationality also gave us more rapidly evolving science, dramatically raising the bar on religion's archaic explanations of reality. Scientific faith though better placed, functionally repeats some errors related to theology. By sometimes abdicating our special reasoning faculties in blind acceptance of 'data' interpreted by alleged 'experts', we make them into substitutes for theological patriarchs recieving and providing expert interpretations of 'data from above'.

The human brain exists for the purpose of making sense out of the environment. My favorite scientist 'believed' - "In the act of thought, life contemplates it's own essence."

First, atheism is simply a belief, no more or less. Don't complicate it. Second, I posted this earlier but I wonder if it may have had a hand in the formation of "gods" It is a naturally occuring hallucinogenic drug that is found in the human body.

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Having been an atheist all my life, dispite the efforts of my family, and haveing hundreds of friends who are atheists, many of whom are fairly prominent, none of use unequivocably say that there is no god, not one person that I know does. Besides, religon has dogma and what would be the dogma of there being no god? I accept there is no god the same way I accept that there is no Santa Clause and that there is no big foot, though. of course there is far more evidence for big foot that there is a for a god.
No, atheism is not a religion, you must learn what a religion is and then try to understand how not beleiveing something can not be a religion. It can act like a religion by utilizing the same kind of community building stratagies as religion but that's as far as it goes. And of course finding reasons to get together do not make a religion otherwise football is a religion, though football does require faith so there is a much closer pracitice of religion in football than there will ever be in atheism.
Can not prove something does not exist, it is only the lack of any ability to prove there is a god that makes me an atheist, a god can still be an unknown, god is an unknown, but becuase I see no reason to think there is a god THAT alone makes me an atheist.

I like to use the terminology of I am a philosophical agnostic and practical atheist.

Do I need to have proof?

Atheism is not a religion. It doesn't have doctrine, it doesn't require faith, there is no guidebook. Its a specific position on a single issue. Also it's not a positive claim so there is no burden of proof.

Atheism is simply the position that you haven't been convinced by the available evidence that there is a god/gods. Its not a claim that there are absolutely definitively no gods. Some atheists will claim that there is absolutely no god but that shifts the burden of proof on them.

Also people use agnostic incorrectly. Gnostic comes from the Greek word gnosis which means knowledge. Gnosticism is a claim to knowledge and truth where atheism is a claim to belief. "I am not convinced by the available evidence there is a god therefore I don't believe in a God" -atheism, "I don't think ultimate knowledge, or divine things are knowable" -agnosticism.

You’re a woman after my own heart. I agree wholeheartedly. Agnosticism is the perfect response.

How would you prove the non-existence of something? You'd have to be everywhere and capable of perceiving all of existence. Lol

Rather, I tend to look at it like the larger the claim, the greater the proof or evidence required. However, since nearly everything is taken on FAITH, not objective, testable evidence, there is no proof. Faith is the antithesis of knowledge, it is the blind acceptance of information for which there is no proof.

By definition, religion and other things are supernatural, or beyond the natural/testable/knowable/objective. If there were evidence, it wouldn't be supernatural.

There certainly is evidence maybe not so much proof