I don’t know what fundamentalists are like in Australia. I do know what they are like in North America. I’ve lived here all my life.
Very, very few of the fundamentalists I have met pay much attention “historic creeds and confessions.” Most of them belong to small sects (SDA, JW, Christadelphian, etc.) which reject much of historic Christian doctrine, or go to small congregational-model churches which have very little in the way of a denominational confession (compared with the Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican etc. confessions). Most of them go to churches where at most one of the Creeds (the Apostle’s) is ever read in services, and often not even that. Some of them subscribe to a pan-denominational confession such as the Westminster, but even there, that is not a distinctive of fundamentalists, since some other Protestants (who might call themselves traditional or evangelical but not fundamentalist) also subscribe to the Westminster confession. More generally, fundamentalists tend be extreme “Bible-only” folks who have little use for tradition as such, hierarchy, learned theology, etc.; their attitude is “All I need is me and God and my Bible, and I can interpret it just fine without linguistic knowledge or theological training.”
On historical-critical method, I don’t know how broadly or loosely you are using the term, but fundamentalists who object to it usually see it (and it often has been used that way, in German, British, and American scholarship) as claiming that the Bible is a book whose composition and transmission has been riddled with human decisions and human errors, and thus is not one that can easily be seen as divinely inspired. And their reaction is entirely logical.
Of course, as I said, some historical-critical insights can be useful to people of faith. But no one who has spent as much time on the history of Biblical scholarship as I have can doubt that historical-critical study has often been employed to undermine Christian (and Jewish) faith. I know also of many Jews who lost their faith due to historical-critical scholarship regarding Mosaic authorship (and related concerns about the text).
Yes, most fundamentalists reject evolution. But their rejection, regardless of any scientific arguments they offer, is required by their method of reading Genesis. Since I don’t subscribe to that method, I am not bound to reject evolution. And I haven’t. You have failed to provide even a single statement of mine that rejects “evolution” understood as “descent with modification” (a definition Joshua accepts as a reasonable one).
I would not say that fundamentalists in principle (though often they do in practice) put “theology” ahead of science. Theology as a mere human construct, they give no authority to whatsoever; hence you own denomination’s rejection of so many cardinal tenets of the Church’s historic faith. But the Bible they regard as wholly inspired and without error. Therefore, any temporary conclusion of scientists that appears to them to contradict the Bible, they regard as erroneous. They reason that human beings, in trying to interpret nature, can make errors, but God in the Bible makes no errors. Again, this is a reasonable line of thought. Where I disagree with them is over their method of interpreting the Bible.
My question stands. I know of no theological position expressed in any denomination or confession which does not put at least some things beyond debate for those who subscribe to it. I know of no historical Christian group which says, “We will believe in the Bible wherever it leads us, even if it leads us to reject much of the historical Christian faith we learned in Sunday school from our parents, elders, and most revered pastors” – and consistently follows through with that program. You might be able to point to individuals who have done so, but for any sect, church, denomination, etc. to do so would be like playing Russian roulette. It’s a recipe for theological anarchy, as each individual church member takes the responsibility for doctrine solely into his own hands.
As you pointed out, though with a different purpose in mind, the history of Protestantism is largely a history of this anarchy, not a history of coming together. How many denominations and theologies were there in Luther’s day? And how many today? We know from the attitude of Luther and Calvin toward Anabaptists etc. that “pluralism” in Biblical interpretation was not an idea they upheld; nor did they think (as modern Americans often seem to think) that any truck driver who decides that he understands the book of Revelation (based on his understanding of King James English, and zero historical or linguistic study) should be allowed to publish, teach, or preach in Christian territories. They certainly maintained that the church had an authoritative function regarding doctrine, even if the way doctrine was arrived at was more Scripture-based than previously. But all of that is scrapped when the evangelical truck driver’s vision of Revelation is regarded as equally sound as the learned theologies of Luther, Calvin, etc. Neither Luther nor Calvin were “fundamentalists” in the current American sense of the term, though of course they were more conservative and traditional than many of their modern successors in Lutheran, Reformed, Presbyterian, and other churches which they directly or indirectly founded.