Darwin's Doubt Makes Positive Claims

Stephen Meyer’s response to the charge that Darwin’s Doubt
makes only a negative “God-of-the-gaps” argument (i.e., “We can’t explain it,
therefore God did it”) is helpful in concisely explaining why this isn’t the
case:

True, the book does offer several
evidentially based (and mathematically rigorous) arguments against the
creative power of the mutation/natural selection mechanism…. (However, it is probably more accurate
to characterize this "absence of knowledge" as knowledge of
inadequacy, since it derives from a thorough assessment of causal powers –
and limitations – of various materialistic evolutionary mechanisms). In any
case, the argument presented in the book is not…a "purely negative"
and, therefore, fallacious argument based on the inadequacy of various
materialistic evolutionary mechanisms (or gaps in our knowledge).

Instead, the book makes a positive
case for intelligent design as an inference to the best explanation for the
origin of the genetic (and epigenetic) information necessary to produce the
first forms of animal life (as well as other features of the Cambrian animals
such as the presence of genetic regulatory networks that function as integrated
circuits during animal development). It advances intelligent design as the best
explanation not only because many lines of evidence now cast doubt on the
creative power of unguided evolutionary mechanisms, but also because of our positive,
experience-based knowledge of the powers that intelligent agents have to
produce as digital and other forms of information as well as integrated circuitry.

Meyer sums up the argument in his book this way:

Premise One: Despite a
thorough search and evaluation, no materialistic causes or evolutionary
mechanisms have demonstrated the power to produce large amounts of specified or
functional information (or integrated circuitry).

Premise Two: Intelligent
causes have demonstrated the power to produce large amounts of
specified/functional information (and integrated circuitry).

Conclusion: Intelligent
design constitutes the best, most causally adequate, explanation for the
specified/functional information (and circuitry) that was necessary to produce
the Cambrian animals….

Unlike an argument from ignorance,
an inference to the best explanation does not assert the adequacy of one causal
explanation merely on the basis of the inadequacy of some other causal
explanation. Instead, it asserts the superior explanatory power of a proposed
cause based upon its established – its known – causal adequacy, and based upon
a lack of demonstrated efficacy, despite a thorough search, of any other
adequate cause. The inference to design, therefore, depends on present
knowledge of the causal powers of various materialistic entities and processes
(inadequate) and intelligent agents (adequate).

The rest of the post
is worth a read.