I know, but still, the oldest schools of Buddhism don’t have anything that would equate to what we in the west consider a god, or gods.

I know that in east asia, south-east Asia etc., there are schools of Buddhism that do have gods.

But Buddhism being in many ways a rejection of brahamical religion in north india/nepal, also rejected the idea of gods when it first started to develop. I think that’s pretty uncontroversial no?