> Exactly, so why keep them around?
Because Lisp source code is written in a data-structure using nested lists and nested lists are written as s-expressions with parentheses. The same Lisp code can be executed by an s-expression-based interpreter.
> When you ditch the parens
Again, the parens are not what Lisp is about, it is the nested lists as source code: internally and externally. It just happens that the lists are written with ( and ).
What you propose is essentially not just getting rid of 'parens', but dropping the source code idea based on explicit list representation.
> , things become easier.
Code generation, manipulation and transformation becomes harder.
> You no longer even have syntax errors.
How so?
> Program concatenation is easier.
How so? Lisp actually makes many forms of source code transformations easy.
> All I'm saying is put S-Expressions into normalized form (indented cleanly), drop the parens, and voila, everything can still work, and you've reduced things to their simplest form.
But then we no longer have the 'Lisp code is explicitly written in a list-based data structure' idea, which is very powerful and still relatively simple.
Language with syntax based on textual representations already exist many and there is a place for a programming language which works slightly differently.
It's possible to drop the explicit s-expression syntax, as has been demonstrated many times over history, but then the has a different look and feel. It becomes something different then and loses basic Lisp features or makes them considerable harder to use.
One can say 'why keep the wheels around'? We can do that, but either the car won't drive very well or one would transform it into something else: a boat, a plane, a sled, .. It would lose its 'car nature'.
