I'm not too sure being non-religious from the start would lead to better education. Seems to me that religion was quite a big driver behind early education. You'll also have some trouble separating history religion and science at that point, people told each other stories about things that happened or how they thought things worked. Some of those stories are rather more fantastical than they needed to be, but how would you tell if there's nothing to kickstart intellectual discourse in the first place?

And the whole religion stops crime through fear idea seems overly simplistic. It's the same reasoning that bigger sentences would lower crime, and so far that hasn't worked terribly well.