Unfortunately, conflicts in white-space based languages can get even worse than regular conflicts because you have very few visual structural "anchors" to start to gain an understanding of the conflict. (If you have to resolve manually, that is.)
Granted, if the number of conflicts which cannot be automatically resolved is reduced by enough, then it might not matter in the grand scheme of things. However, I'd be worried that this would make "accidental" automatic resolution of semantic conflicts more common. That may be an unfounded/irrational fear, I don't know.
Primary goals were to remove as much syntax as possible and make it play well with line-based diffs (with the hopes that someone who knows knowing about the language could resolve conflicts without getting tripped up by surrounding quotes, trailing comments, etc).