the search for the missing link was never like a search for "a missing link" but just a search for enough intelligent, reasoning and hopefully rational to end its own miserable self-terminal cycle.
as a Christian I'm a huge Richard dawkins fan boy because let's face it the Buddha was onto something with ending all suffering but he was either a selfish fuck or kinda a jew (toward himself and pleasure), no religious pun intended. Christ was onto something too you know because Christ wanted to end all suffering faster, but whether he really did this effectively is up for debate. i don't see Richard dawkins necessarily as a Satanist scientist because he doesn't seem to be hedonistic "to that extent". i mean to be a serious Satanist (at least prior to any rational convergence OF ALL THINGS) is to really go out on a limb to obliterate virtually everything.
so i just see dawkins as a scientist and that science at least in this life and on our plane and within the possible worlds that are to me reasonably conceivable -- is probably how I'd put this -- is likely to end suffering and enhance human welfare pretty quickly. i wouldn't call myself strictly a scientist because empiricism and science are not obviously synonymous to me. like yea if it happens it happens but sometimes really wild and crazy shit happens and that's just what happens. I'm not sure I'd refer to this process as science but dawkins might. either way i do think that in terms of global and universalizable improvement of life conditions science is pretty likely to lead us in the right direction.
if there's anything else that might help it would probably be autism and of course Wittgenstein.