maybe you should call these "wars of religion," but they fit neither of your scenarios.

True.

Everyone knows that Israel is a settler conflict. If you think it is religious conflict, what is the religion of the Palestinians? The PLO was originally Christian and atheist. It would be odd to call it a religious conflict when the religion of one side changes (even just that of their leaders).

Good point.

the quite consistent pattern is that when I obtain information, I downgrade the religious hypothesis.

OK, I have noticed the same thing. But that hardly means the political motive is the main cause of all ostensibly religious conflicts (which is the claim to which I was originally responding).

Other ways in which religion could play a causal role in war include:

• What if the doctrine of a religion is itself explicitly encouraging of violent approaches to conflict resolution?

• What if the version of history promulgated by a religious community, perhaps encoded in its sacred text, casts the community as victims of perpetually untrustworthy outsiders?

• What if the doctrine of a religion states that unbelievers cannot be expected to cooperate in Prisoners' Dilemma-type situations?

If the Greens believed in a religion that featured the above characteristics (or some of them), surely that would be evidence in favor of the religious nature of the war?