>>6105572
I haven't read the book in a while either, but there was a short tale released before Childhood's End, as a sort of pilot with a very similar plot, called Guardian Angel.
Anyway, the point wasn't that it needed to have deep biblical connections. That's precisely what people criticize about Evangelion.
I think the problem with the whole religion stuff in Evangelion is that people expect Evangelion to be some sort of accurate adaptation of the bible or something, but it's the other way around, Evangelion adapts certain real world religion concepts into its own ancient aliens lore. Adam and Eva? Sure, they exist, but they're not how people imagined they are. Fruit of life and Fruit of knowledge? They exist, but again, not exactly apples.
Evangelion even gets a bit obscure and pulls off shit like Lilith, who is only mentioned as the first woman before Eva only in some essays by some hebrew theologist from the 1800s or whatever.
Anyway, this doesn't mean Evangelion has "deep" connections to religions, that's not the point and never was. It's just that it uses certain IRL religion elements to play around, but it's always with its own rules. It is a sci-fi fictional work, anyway. Much like Childhood's End, that uses the common perceived IRL idea of how demons look like, and incorporated it into its own fictional world, explaining why humans thought demons looked like that.
People take Anno's "we used religious symbolism to be cool" from the interview with the kids at school as a way to discredit Evangelion, but the thing is, there's nothing wrong with "using religious symbolism to be cool". There's nothing to get mad about, it's just a sci-fi story.