Nice humanist sentiment from Augustana's frontman

On Weekend Edition last week, I caught part of an interview with Dan Layus, singer/songwriter for the band Augustana. You may know them for their song, Boston, featured on Scrubs.

It turns out the guys in the band went to a private Christian college, and Layus studied Christian music. He has some pretty negative things to say about his sheltered and indoctrinated upbringing. But what really made my heart glow was when host Ari Shapiro asked whether Layus's music retained a "spiritual" element, even though he'd left his Christian education behind.

Now, I detest the word spiritual. I think it's a mush-brained weasel word that basically means someone has rejected organized religion, but is too scared or lazy to examine their fuzzier irrational beliefs, so they slap a positive-sounding label on their mishmash of unfounded suppositions about the supernatural.

Well, here's what Layus said in response: "I have a more positive and realistic place to put it now," Layus says, "which is my wife and my daughter and our music. And writing songs and being able to love my family like that, is more than enough for me."