I can't speak for the creationists or the YECs but I speak for the most sensible treatment of Genesis.
1, 1:1 is a section title; it is not action in the account.
2, 1:2 says that when God starting forming the earth into what we now have, it was 'formless and void.' We don't know exactly what that was, and we don't know how long. But it is the same theme that is found in many cosmologies. The creator God takes chaotic, dark, material and forms it into that which is habitable for mankind.
2A, I don't know other explanations for why the animal and plant worlds are as 'domestic' as they now are, but clearly they are. Many other cosmologies refer to an ancient world dominated by a huge lizard that was vanquished by the creator. Coincidence? I think not. Even a few Psalms and Job mention this.
2B, some other cosmologies refer to the creator simply speaking and things take their shape. The Suquamish (Chief Sealth, etc) in WA state, for example, speak of the Creator as 'the form-changer' or 'transformer.' In addition, the definition of evil is when the creatures use that power deceptively; it is taken away from them when they do.
3, the creative acts of God reverse 'formless and void.' Again, I think this is local reference. The heavens seem to have been just fine, but earth was a mess. It needed both forming and filling. We know earth's functions need the celestial mechanical input of its solar system, and it appears that God spoke this into existence as we now know it.
4, the presuppositions of Genesis 1 are completely different from naturalistic uniformitarianism, so there is no point in comparing computers to bubble gum. We must come to terms with the literature's presuppositions instead of blocking it out because of ours.
(have a laugh: a US columnist was visiting Bucharest and was surprised that a local would try to teach its dog to obey in Hungarian. Didn't the fellow know that he should use English? Then he realized the obvious. So it is with presuppositions. "English" is not the only language out there.)
4A, therefore it is more accurate to say that a belief in the creator is partly religious. It is not "just religious." There are compelling facts to deal with. The astrophysicists Gonzales and ____ who did the doc THE PRIVILEGED PLANET have their 20 or so physical phenomena that is 'Goldilocks' for humans. Coincidence? Really? Have you ever done the math on the probability that all 20 or so would 'happen' coherently and harmoniously?
You can read Gen 1-11 a hundred times, and you will never get impression that Moses is trying to escape fact. You get the opposite. He is integrating what he knows of a Creator beyond the visible with as many visible, demonstrable facts he can. There may be a thing or two for which he has no or poor vocabulary, but you're not dealing with a person who is on drugs or given to fantasy. As the filmmaker Hitchcock would say, 'What do you mean a book of fantasy? The Bible has evil, murder, treachery on nearly every page.'
This is why, for ex., the creation account matches (answers) 'formless and void.' It is meant very deliberately, and zones that are formed are filled with living creatures in expected sequence. It is not like the last scene in Antonioni's BLOW UP where people are playing tennis without a ball. It is coherent, reality-based. (I happen to think that 6day is mistaken here about the sun on the 1st day. Either the days were longer, or the literary day was much longer, or enough light was provided without a sun and moon, but I can't come down where he does about morning and evening until day 4).
Look at 2:10+. We have just read of the tree of knowledge and are puzzled. But now the same person is telling us the location of this spot, and there are 4 headwaters. They have features. They have names current to Moses' time (and have lasted to our time) so a person can go see for themselves that there was a real space and time he was writing about. These are not throw-away features. They matter to Genesis' credibility, because ch 1 does sound poetic. It is when the poetry of ch 1 and the tangible detail of ch 2 are merged that we know we what kind of person we have writing. THE BATTLE HYMN OF THE MARINES is poetic but anyone can look up the shores of Tripoli when it was part of an Islamic caliphate, and see what happened.
Then there is nudity. Today there is some degree of embarrassment or ashamedness about it, which is a natural instinct. The person who is deliberately secular or agnostic does over the top things to deny this. (Note recently the feminist top-free day in Toronto titled NUDITY IS NOT SEXUAL. Total nonsense.) So when Gen 2:25 says there was no shame between the man and the woman, we know we have a situation before the earth was defiled by evil, and that this was radically altered by evil. A husband and wife can enjoy nudity, but it has horrible results outside of marriage.
A physician in Gaskell's novel MIDDLEMARCH, set in the 1800s, was attending to a birth. The husband was a new botanist enamored with Darwin, Mendel, etc. The husband was going on and on about how the plants or birds or butterflies had so many chances and years and generations to adapt into new forms. After the delivery, the doctor cut him off. "So many chances? You had better not ever try to help with a birth!"
