According to a team of researchers from the University of Minnesota, how you answer that question is a “strong predictor” of what you think and know about the theory of evolution. They interviewed 400 college students taking an introductory biology class but not majoring in the subject and found that students who understand the Earth is more than 4.5 billion years old are much more likely to understand and accept evolution.
This is an important finding, says Sehoya Cotner, a biology professor who led the study, because it means the “role of the Earth’s age is a key variable that we can use to improve education about evolution.” That said, the researchers recognize that deep time is a tough concept to grasp, and it’s a lot easier to teach and learn creationist ideas about the age of the Earth than it is to work through the scientific evidence and explanations.
The researchers also found that students who are more religiously and politically conservative are more likely to endorse young-Earth beliefs than students with more liberal views are, and they’re less likely to correctly answer questions about evolution. Yet, as the team writes in its paper:

Holding young-Earth views may not significantly impede a student’s ability to learn facts about evolutionary theory. Thus, although it is not the role of biology instructors to engage in political or religious proselytizing, there remains the possibility of changing what students know about evolution via academic instruction.

Republican Representative Tim Moore has introduced a new bill in the Kentucky House of Representatives that would let teachers promote “objective discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of scientific theories” and “use, as permitted by the local board of education, materials in addition to state-approved texts and instructional materials for discussion of scientific theories including evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.” The bill has been sent to the House Education Committee.
Like other “academic freedom” bills, this one claims not to be promoting any religious doctrine—though, to many, this bill (like the others) is a stealth attempt to undercut the teaching of evolution and sneak religious ideas like “intelligent design” into the science classroom. (Barbara Forrest, the leading member of a group advocating for sound science education, explains why such disclaimers are a “dead giveaway of the creationist (hence religious) agenda” of these acts.)
We were shocked to learn that Kentucky currently has a statute that allows instructors teaching evolution to “include as a portion of such instruction the theory of creation as presented in the Bible, and may accordingly read such passages in the Bible as are deemed necessary for instruction on the theory of creation, thereby affording students a choice as to which such theory to accept.” The statute also says that for students “who accept the Bible theory of creation, credit shall be permitted on any examination in which adherence to such theory is propounded, provided the response is correct according to the instruction received.”

Mississippi’s “pro-con” bill, which would have required “equal instruction from educational materials that present arguments from both protagonists and antagonists of the theory of evolution” in the state’s public schools, is dead.

A new bill introduced in the Missouri House of Representatives looks identical to the “academic freedom” bill that died in the state last year.
Again, the bill would require public school officials and administrators to create an environment “that encourages students to explore scientific questions, learn about scientific evidence, develop critical thinking skills, and respond appropriately and respectfully to differences of opinion about controversial issues, including biological and chemical evolution.” (Keep in mind that evolution is not a point of controversy or debate in the scientific community.) It would also permit teachers “to help students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of the theory of biological and hypotheses of chemical evolution.”
Regular readers of this blog will recognize the bill—with its “strengths and weaknesses” language—as another attempt to undercut the teaching of evolution and sneak religious ideas like creationism and “intelligent design” into the science classroom (even though the bill itself claims not to “promote philosophical naturalism or biblical theology, promote natural cause or intelligent cause, promote undirected change or purposeful design, promote atheistic or theistic belief, promote discrimination for or against a particular set of religious beliefs or ideas, or promote discrimination for or against religion or nonreligion.”)