How do creationist explain fossil fuels?

From me Genesis 4.18 explains a lot. On a quick glance I'm identfying three perspectives (but it may be more to it):
a) It has a role in the economy of the myth, it explains the characters involved by defining the relation between them.
b) Together with other Biblical verses it explains a worldview. All humanity comes from an archetypal couple created by God, Adam and Eve. Multiplicating this archetype, the humans populate the world and each human has direct lineage to the archetypal couple.
c) A cult of the ancestors (explaining who one is and where is he going to). Spelling out each link from a genealogical chain in a repetitive, formulaic manner suggests sacrality (I am aware what we have in the Bible might be only a reflection of the cult the ancient Jews had). It is one of the possible bricks of Jewish cultural and ethnic identity (and it may be argued it consolidated Christian cultural and religious identities as well).

And thus I think my position has been misunderstood. When I'm talking about human experience, I'm not addressing only the experience of the natural world, but also the experience of needs, fears, hopes, the experience of human existence, the experience of self-reflection. Many myths are stories that explain observed phenomena but many myths are not. I already pointed out that Chronos eating his children does not account for anything observed by man. Let's stick to the Biblical Flood, though. The verses from Genesis 8.6-12 (sending birds to look for land) hardly can be considered as an account for some physically observed phenomenon (at most, if originating in a sea-faring culture it may reflect the human knowledge to anticipate the land when seeing sea-gulls or other birds, however here we have more than that). They certainly have a role in the economy of the myth (to let Noah know when the earth dried out), but they encode meanings on their own, possible another myths which melted in this one. I'm not sure if it's worth digging, so I'll just sketch some meaningful elements: the three flights of the dove (a number with magical properties for many archaic cultures), the mythical opposition between raven and the dove (with several dichotomies to explore: white/black, trust/distrust, success/failure, etc.), the symbolism of olive branch/leaf (undoubtely one of the most important trees for the near-Eastern societies).

I disagree with any taxonomy trying to separate verifiable from un-verifiable in a religious text, because often there are statements holding both types of elements. For instance, Gensis 6.17: "And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die." We can't verify there's a God, but we can verify that no such massive extinction occured in the history of earth since human species exist. If God did it, then a bulk of scientific theories are flat wrong, the laws of nature predicted by them were violated by a transcendent force in a way we cannot understand (perhaps except some religious minds enjoying revelation), we live an illusion. Taking literally such a statement means getting in conflict with science.

For religions without metaphysics one can start with Eastern Asia. There's an entire spectrum there, lacking of showing minimal metaphysics. In science there's no metaphyics, unless it is misunderstood (some scholars might have personal worldviews which include metaphysics, true, but their work, if scientific, it doesn't).

Modern creationism may claim to be a scientific theory, but it isn't, because it is not refutable empirically. It is also not really any different at base than the belief in creationism which is common to the Abrahamic religions. I don't see any reason to separate it out.

Part of Menumorut's argument was interesting in that it raised the possibility of a non-theological argument for young earth creationism, based on the proposition that it is simpler than the alternatives. Strictly speaking that argument doesn't require a creator (though I gather Menumorut believs in one): the universe could have come into existence in line with any of the multitudinous beliefs people had had over time.

Not animal origin - humans are animals in the biological sense, they don't just originate in an animal and then suddenly cease being an animal.