The brief response to the rest is that yes, if you don't believe Jesus was a deluded liar or a charlatan, you come around to seeing the OT as eyewitness account from an unerring source: God. As with everything, the central issue is Jesus.
Start with that premise, and the phenomena of geology with the resultant timeline are seen differently. Whereas someone who assumes a uniformitarian approach would say a stratum is old because it has old fossils, and the fossils are old because they're in an old stratum (see the pretty circle?), another with another assumption would see it differently.
The much shorter answer is that I'm not at all sure that dinosaurs, which there is reason to believe existed alongside men, weren't on the ark.
Would it not be more in keeping with the theological objectives of the Hebrew Scriptures (as a commentary on the relationship between humans and G-D) to focus first and foremost on the theological message of the Genesis account of the Great Flood? And in so doing, one would note that there are other stories of the Great Flood from ancient Sumeria and Babylon; and one would note that the Genesis account deliberately borrows the main story line from the Flood story that featured Utnapishtim, but also deliberately re-casts the story to reflect theological convictions of Ancient Israel.
See, for example, what Nahum Sarna says about the Genesis Flood story in his book, Understanding Genesis. In this approach, attention to the literary character of the story leads to a greater appreciation of its theological message.
So my question is: what can an insistence on the literal, historical and geological veracity of the Flood Story ADD?
So I guess that's the basic problem "Christans" have with "Catholics"? Catholics pick and chose what they want to believe and preach? (And also, don't Christians have a problem with Catholics worshiping statues and stuff?)
Ignorance is bliss.
You must lead a very blissful life.