As to the rest, I'm quite familiar with the argument. We could have a long friendly chat, but the bottom-line answer is fairly simple.
The reason why Christians "insist" on such things is that God's revelation is framed in history as well as words, and the words reveal the history (Hebrews 1:1, 2).
In other words, quite literally from Genesis to Revelation, God (A) DOES NOT reveal Himself by means of a series of high-flown apothegms and theoretical musings, but by starkest contrast (B) DOES elect to reveal Himself in words and deeds done in this year, in this kingdom, in this city, by this river, to this person with this name. There simply is no getting around it.
And Jesus affirms this very approach to both Old (retrospectively) and New (prospectively) Testaments.
So it all boils down to this: is Jesus a deluded liar, or isn't He?
A Christian is a person who affirms that He is the truth.
A person who denies that is a non-Christian.
To do that well, one is not engaging in vague theological musings; one is carrying out hard literary and historical analysis to get at sublime theological truths. One is also recognizing how God revealed His Will to human beings living at a particular time and place, by means of inspiring human authors to write a story well in order to clarify more carefully the faith of Ancient Israel vis-a-vis other cultures.
Compared to that sort of insight, what is the value of arguing about the presence of dinosaurs on the Ark?