Young earth creationism in its modern form is indeed often idolatry. In Galatians, Paul strongly warns against making anything besides the gospel central. Yet creation science judges not by whether one shows credible evidence of faith in Christ and repentance from sin, but whether one uncritically accepts whatever claims are put out by one’s favorite creation scientists. Young-earth organizations and advocates frequently support non-Christian religious groups that are willing to buy into aspects of their bad scientific claims, while demonizing Christians who point out problems with their views.
Jesus warned about placing the traditions of men above the commandments of God. Yet young-earth creationism does not hesitate to place “You shall promote a young earth” ahead of “You shall not bear false witness.” Attention to quality and consistency is quite rare. Admitting “this is not a good argument” is uncommon, and sometimes incorporates further misrepresentation. (For example, before the ugly divorce with CMI, AiG had a list of arguments not to use that included the moon dust myth, but the explanation of why it wasn’t so good contained the lie that young earthers had examined new evidence and reached the conclusion that there were problems while citing old earthers pointing out evidence available when the moon dust story was first invented.)
Young-earth creationism creates a god working only in certain ways specified by them, rather than accepting that God is greater than we understand and trying to understand the evidence of how He actually does work.
Romans 7:4 continues the argument from 5:12, stating that Christians have died to the Law. Yet you aren’t physically dead. Adam and Eve did not immediately keel over upon sinning. More generally, the Bible is much more focused on spiritual rather than physical death. And even some young-earth advocates admit that not having any animals dying before the Fall is not practical (would an elephant never step on a bug? how do Adam and Eve make any sense of the warning about death without the example of physical death of animals?) Before modern young earth creationism made “no physical death before the fall” a theological principle in support of a young earth, there was consideration of the possibility by many writers. Athanasius, the champion of Nicene orthodoxy, proposed that an unfallen human would experience something similar to a peaceful death in order to transition from earthly to heavenly life. Aquinas strongly doubted that carnivores would have been herbivorous before the Fall. Calvin doubted whether Genesis 1:30 could be pressed into showing that carnivory did not happen before the Fall, though he tended to accept that position.
Also, if animal death is inherently bad, that runs into problems with God providing food to the lions and ravens in Ps. 104 (which seems to be a reflection on the creation) and especially with the fact of Jesus eating fish and meat.
Note that seeing the garden of Eden as an earthly sanctuary does not require that the area outside the garden be as safe as inside. Ruling and subduing the earth was not a task to be achieved from an armchair.
Of course, one could hold a young-earth position without making an idol of it. But the young-earth movement is so resistant to self-examination as to make it difficult.