> The parentheses are in Lisp because functions (and special forms) have
> variable arity.

This isn't necessarily true, see eg:

http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/1646
http://srfi.schemers.org/srfi-49/srfi-49.html

So you can have lisp without parentheses if you can live with that
pythonesque indentation thing -- I personally would prefer the
parentheses though which are quite easy to read when you're used to
it.

To a certain extent I can actually understand Pascal's sympathy for
lisp. The problem with lisp rather is useless (Scheme) or bloated (CL)
standards.