This is how pg interpreted it. I wouldn't be surprised if the real reaction was more about _disgust_ rather than fear: I personally do like the functional programming and everything-is-a-symbol paradigms of Lisp, I just hate THOSE DAMN PARENTHESES and would probably try hard to avoid using Lisp at my workplace.
Some people have the same reaction when confronted with whitespace/indentation in Python, doesn't mean they're afraid to learn it.
I'd say that "functional programming" and "everything-is-a-symbol" are not really essential in (and actually quite far from) the actual paradigm of Common Lisp. Modern Common Lisp code is not especially functional, nor do the symbols play a significant role. It's more about the macros and the objects nowadays.
In case you did not mean "Common Lisp" by "Lisp", try to be more specific next time. The "Lisp" term does not include Scheme, and is not really that much used when talking about Clojure.
What do you mean by "everything-is-a-symbol", anyway?
