Sorry, but I think that is complete bullshit. Why should some beginner start with Lisp and Haskell? He should start with something that is useful for him, that is, he should consider what he wants to do, pick a suitable programming language and get started.

Nothing against LISP, but if he was into Web programming for instance, I think it would be a bad choice. Maybe an experienced programmer could leverage the power of LISP for that task, but a beginner needs good documentation, examples to look at, a community to ask when he is stuck etc. I don't think LISP would be top of the list in those categories.