Earlier quoted context omitted.
The "claim to fame" has more to do with homoiconicity, ie. that the language is its own syntax tree. This allows you to extend the language in arbitrarily complex ways in the language itself - a consequence of this is the simplicity of writing a self-interpreter. Languages involve a lot of apparent mystification, in part because the syntax tree and the semantics of the syntax tree are not the program you are writing.…
Where this argument loses me is that I have yet to see a single Lisp person going around extolling the virtues of Prolog, a language that is also homoiconic and has macros. (If Lisp people want to start doing that though, I'd be happy. Prolog is great.)
Well I would, I often mention logic programming in the same list as functional. However, lisp is simply awesome/powerful/etc. while logic and more formal-abstract kinds of programming (from Prolog to Haskell) are "difficultly" awesome.