As Fish said, a flow of electrons is electricity. So lightning is a flood of electrons that have been stripped off of their atoms, and are attracted to the ground. The electrons do not actually originate in the cloud, but are stripped off of the atoms in the air. In metals, such as wire, the outer electrons are so loosely held, that they will become dislodged, and be shared amoung the nearest atoms. When an electric charge is applied to this wire, the electrons start to flow, which is again, electricity.

When you have electrically charged radiation, alpha and beta particles, amoung others, they are actually the result of changes, commonly from nuclear decay, in the composition of the nucleus of the atom. These generally are not involved in electric flow, but you mentioned radiation, so there is the basic info.

What you refer to with electrons speeding up is the absorption of a photon, packet of light. If a photon collides with an electron, the electron will gain energy, and speed up. If the light is the correct frequency, the electron that absorbs it will be dislodged from its atom, and create a flow of electricity. This is called the photoelectric effect, and won Albert Einstein the Nobel Prize for its discovery.

You might as well get some trivial with your answer .

Clearly, I have simplified some topics, but that should be the basics.

My mistake.  I misunderstood.  He discovered the current explanation for it.   

    Thanks for the nice clarification everyone. I feel a lot better about electricity and atoms. My question was prompted because I was trying to understand how electricity came into play during the Miller-Urey experiments i.e. why they used electricity in their experiments.

Haha. You are hitting the nail on the hard aren't you?

I presume, (if I may paraphrase what you are saying so that I know I am understanding you correctly) that you are wondering why experiments like M-U's matter to me, if I being a theist, presumes to already know how life on earth was created?

That is often a question that I've been replaying in my head as of late. Honestly, I don't have an answer for you yet beyond the simple fact that I find the abiogenesis theories interesting and intriguing.

I understand you to be essentially challenging my intentions because they seem to repel my faith-based beliefs.

Possible Scenario: Researching the origins of life on earth without God, seems to suggest that I don't think God did it. If I did believe that God did it, then I wouldn't bother researching the scientific theories because God did it.

My reply: The key word that I hate in living according to this scenario's recommendations is "bother". I interpret this "description" to be an admission of laziness and fear on behalf of the God believer.

My personal view on this faith-challenging research is the following:

(1)If God exists, and is all powerful, and he can provide strength and salvation within his believers, then I don't see how researching and learning could somehow usurp that power of faith in God.

(2)If the faith I have is in something that is existent and true, then researching science with an open mind shouldn't shake my faith.

(3)The bible says that "man's knowledge" is lesser in comparison to God's knowledge. I am testing and learning man's knowledge for my own benefit; I don't want to just ignore it. If man's knowledge is truly lesser (as the Bible says), then I should not be deeply impacted by its knowledge in a negative way in relation to my faith.

I hope this provides you with a little insight into my thinking.

Lastly, I don't pretend to know that God created the universe; instead, I believe that he did. However, I don't believe in ignoring scientific attempts to explain how things like life and the earth came about. I want to understand the scientific theories as best I can because if I believe that God did it, and leave it at that, then what would I have to research with and learn about the origins of life on Earth?

I realize this may sound stupid or self-defeating, a pointless endeavor, if I insist on still believing in God during my research in a typically God-less field of science. But please, trust me when I say that I am trying to be open minded and un-biased all the while. I don't want to just assert God in the gaps of science.

I would much rather see the current limits of science and wonder along side the scientist with an educated perplexity and gather my own opinions about the unknown beyond. I don't think science would gripe with that.

If you want an inside look into my head, I would tell you that it seems more like a Christian leaning towards questioning his beliefs, rather than a Christian safely sheltered in bias and blind-faith.

Lightning would undoubtedly cause a large number of atoms and molecules in the immediate area to become ionized, and potentially much more reactive. Some would simply lose electrons, others may react with other ions. The idea is that zapping a basic mixture of elements, gives it a nice source of starting chemical reactions, in a random way, using a source of energy that was present on early earth.