what did the ancients think god was

Thales, who first inquired into this sort of matter, believed God to be a Spirit that made all things of water;

Anaximander, that the gods were always dying and entering into life again; and that there were an infinite number of worlds;

Anaximines, that the air was God, that he was procreate and immense, always moving

Anaxagoras the first, was of opinion that the description and manner of all things were conducted by the power and reason of an infinite spirit.

Alcmon gave divinity to the sun, moon, and stars, and to the soul.

Pythagoras made God a spirit, spread over the nature of all things, whence our souls are extracted

Parmenides, a circle surrounding the heaven, and supporting the world by the ardour of light.

Empedocles pronounced the four elements, of which all things are composed, to be gods;

Protagoras had nothing to say, whether they were or were not, or what they were

Democritus was one while of opinion that the images and their circuitions were gods; another while, the nature that darts out those images; and then, our science and intelligence.

Speusippus, the nephew of Plato, makes God a certain power governing all things, and that he has a soul.

Zeno says ’tis the law of nature, commanding good and prohibiting evil; which law is an animal; and takes away the accustomed gods, Jupiter, Juno, and Vesta

Diogenes Apolloniates, that ’tis air. Zenophanes makes God round, seeing and hearing, not breathing, and having nothing in common with human nature.

Aristo thinks the form of God to be incomprehensible, deprives him of sense, and knows not whether he be an animal or something else

Diagoras and Theodoras flatly denied that there were any gods at all

Sir Isaac Newton He is called the Lord God, the Universal Emperor–that the word God is relative, and relates itself with slaves–and that the Deity is the dominion or the sovereignty of God, not over his own body, as those think who look upon God as the soul of the world, but over slaves

Hart makes god the ground of being

And you still a find a believer calling an igtheist arrogant for saying god is a word that hasn’t been coherently defined and thus talk of its or their existence, is really a chasing after the wind!

Note: The above are taken from the Apology for Raymond Sebond except Isaac Newton and Hart’s conception of god[s]