I believe in divine inspiration of Scripture, but in my experience, the often quoted saying that “God is the author” of Scripture usually causes people to overemphasizes the divinity of Scripture and underemphasizes the humanity of Scripture. The Bible is not something along the lines of the Book of Mormons or Koran that was divinely dictated. Thus we must respect the culture and context and language of the original author/audience. The weight of authority isn’t in the fact that the cultural beliefs of the human author (scientific and other) are necessarily accurate, but in the divine message that’s being communicated through a particular human being living in a particular time in history in a particular culture (that’s at least what I mean when I say I believe in divine inspiration).
To think that a 1st century Jew was thinking “matter”, “particles”, “fluid”, or “energy”, is a stretch, in my opinion, it might help us reconcile scientific difficulties, but doesn’t line up with what we know of the culture in which Peter lived in.
A better approach, in my opinion, is to look elsewhere in Scripture and other writings, for example, other ANE creation accounts such as the Enuma Elish, that existed during the time the Bible was written to better understand Peter’s reference to the world being “created out of water”.
But I did not speak to Peter, so you are right, probably should have but “these are the kinds of things I think Peter is trying to convey.”