THE ISLAND OF LOST SOULS AND THE BIBLE (Santamaria)

Last night I watched the 1932 film called The Island of Lost Souls and thought about its implications, especially the line Dr. Moreau said about feeling like God - ed]

Island of Lost Souls (1932) is basically a parable dressed up as a fever dream: what happens when a man with a laboratory, a whip, and an ego starts talking like a deity. Dr. Moreau isn’t just “a scientist who goes too far.” He’s something older and uglier—the human temptation to seize the prerogatives of God while remaining morally unfit to carry them.

And when Charles Laughton’s Moreau savors that line about feeling like God, the film hits its theological nerve. It’s not merely blasphemy as profanity; it’s blasphemy as posture: the creature trying to sit on the Creator’s throne.

The Bible is blunt about this impulse. In Eden, the serpent’s pitch isn’t atheism. It’s apotheosis: “ye shall be as gods” (Gen. 3:5, KJV). That’s the seed. Moreau’s island is Eden in reverse: not God forming man from the dust and breathing life by sovereign word, but man hacking at living things, splicing and reshaping, trying to manufacture “man” through pain and pride. Genesis presents creation as speech (“God said…”). Moreau’s “creation” is surgery—a counterfeit word, carved into flesh.

The counterfeit creator

What makes Moreau so chilling is that he doesn’t just experiment; he legislates. He creates a “law” for his Beast People—ritualized prohibitions, liturgical repetition—and enforces it with terror. It’s a grotesque parody of Sinai. God’s law is holy and reveals God’s character (Ps. 19:7–9). Moreau’s law is a cage for his own project, a tool to keep unstable creatures from collapsing back into what they were. It’s moral window-dressing for an ontological problem.

That’s not accidental. Scripture shows that the “I will be like the Most High” ambition tends to come with rule-making and image-making. Babel isn’t a research institute, but the spiritual logic is identical: “let us make us a name” (Gen. 11:4). The builders are not content to be creatures; they want permanence, control, ascent. Moreau’s island is a private Babel: hidden, insulated, and built to enshrine one man’s will.

The irony is that the moment someone says, “I feel like God,” the Bible’s diagnostic lights start flashing. God is the one who can say, “I am” (Ex. 3:14). The creature who tries to claim that space collapses into “I will,” “I can,” “I must”—and eventually, “I’ll make you.”

That’s why the “feeling” matters. It’s not an argument; it’s an intoxication. Scripture repeatedly portrays hubris as a kind of spiritual drunkenness: a mind swollen beyond its creaturely limits. Nebuchadnezzar walks into his palace and essentially purrs, “Look what I built,” and the judgment is swift (Dan. 4:30–32). Herod receives worship—“the voice of a god, and not of a man”—and is struck down (Acts 12:22–23). The message isn’t that greatness is sinful. It’s that self-deification is suicidal.

“Can’t you see? I am… above you.”

Moreau’s “god-feeling” has another biblical twin: Pharaoh. Pharaoh doesn’t need to call himself God for the story to treat him like a theological rival. He stands as the human “No” against God’s “Let my people go.” He hardens, controls, punishes, and engineers a society through coercion. In Exodus, the point isn’t merely that Pharaoh is cruel; it’s that he’s acting as if he owns what God calls His own. Moreau does the same with life: he takes creatures that are not his and says, in effect, “I will define what you are.”

That impulse strikes at the biblical doctrine of image. In Genesis, humanity bears God’s image (Gen. 1:26–27). That means human dignity is not manufactured; it’s bestowed. Moreau tries to do the opposite: to confer “humanity” by technique. But the film keeps showing the crack in the system: you can manipulate bodies and behaviors, but you cannot create a new nature by knife and command.

That’s a deeply biblical point. Scripture distinguishes between outward reform and inward re-creation. You can scrub the outside of the cup while the inside remains filthy (Matt. 23:25–26). You can bind someone with rules, but rules can’t resurrect the heart. The prophets promise something Moreau cannot deliver: “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you” (Ezek. 36:26). Moreau can mutilate; God regenerates. Moreau can produce mimicry; God produces life.

In Christian terms, Moreau can do behavioral modification. He cannot do what Jesus calls being “born again” (John 3:3–8). And the film’s horror comes partly from watching a man try to replace the Spirit with scalpels.

The law without life

The Beast People chant “Are we not men?” like a creed, but it functions like a desperate spell. They want identity, stability, acceptance. Moreau offers them a “law” as a substitute for true transformation. That’s essentially what Paul calls “having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof” (2 Tim. 3:5). Form, without power. Ritual, without renewal.

This is where the biblical references get uncomfortably relevant: Scripture warns that law, detached from life, becomes condemnation. “The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life” (2 Cor. 3:6). Moreau is all letter. He’s a priest of the dead letter. His island is a cathedral of technique.

And here’s the savage twist: Moreau’s “feeling like God” doesn’t lead him to mercy or holiness—the two things the Bible insists belong to God’s reign. Instead, it leads him to cruelty and contempt, because he is not God. When a sinner plays deity, the result is never divine; it’s demonic in the sense of being anti-creational, anti-human, anti-mercy.

That’s why the Bible’s great “you’re not God” passages keep circling the same themes: God gives life; God judges righteously; God defends the weak. The false god hoards life, judges selfishly, and exploits the weak.

“Ye shall be as gods” … and you will be naked

Genesis is merciless: when humans seize at godhood, they don’t become gods—they become ashamed, hiding, covering, blaming (Gen. 3:7–13). The “god-feeling” evaporates and leaves vulnerability exposed. That’s Moreau’s arc too. His claims are grand until the order breaks. Then the island reveals what it always was: not a kingdom, but a cage. Not a creation, but a crisis delayed.

Biblically, pride always promises exaltation and delivers humiliation. “Pride goeth before destruction” (Prov. 16:18). The reason isn’t arbitrary. Pride is a lie about reality: it treats a dependent creature as self-existent. The universe can’t support that delusion for long. Eventually, gravity reasserts itself.

A theological horror, not a scientific one

If you reduce Island of Lost Souls to “science ethics,” you miss its sharper blade. The true terror isn’t that knowledge is dangerous. The terror is that a fallen will plus power equals tyranny. Knowledge is a tool; worship is the question. Who gets to name things? Who gets to decide what a life is for? Who can cross boundaries without becoming monstrous?

Scripture frames those questions as ultimately theological. Humans are stewards, not owners (Ps. 24:1). We are dust, not deity (Gen. 2:7). We can cultivate the garden, but we cannot declare ourselves the Gardener.

Moreau’s god-feeling is the ancient sin in modern costume. It’s the serpent’s whisper with a lab coat. It’s the Tower of Babel with a whip. And the film’s bleak wisdom is that when a man feels like God, other beings start feeling like tools—and tools can be cut, burned, discarded.

The one true “feels like God”

The Bible has one astonishing counterpoint to Moreau’s line: the one person who actually is divine does not say “I feel like God” as an excuse for domination. Instead, “being in the form of God… made himself of no reputation… and humbled himself” (Phil. 2:6–8). The real God doesn’t grasp; He gives. He doesn’t vivisect; He heals. He doesn’t make men into beasts; He restores beasts into men.

That contrast is the moral X-ray of the story. Moreau is the anti-Christ figure not because he’s flamboyantly evil, but because he embodies the opposite of divine character: power without righteousness, creation-talk without compassion, law without life.

So the line lands like a confession: “I feel like God” means “I have confused power with right.” Scripture calls that idolatry—worshiping the self as ultimate. And idolatry always bleeds.

In the end, Island of Lost Souls isn’t primarily about animals made human. It’s about a human trying to become God—and revealing, by the attempt, how beastly a man can become when he crowns himself.