Then we differ in our definitions of the term. My understanding is that it necessarily requires a target, real or imaginary.
From where did you get your understanding? The positive psychology literature I read suggest that gratitude works well without having a target.
There are also plenty of Buddhist monks who have no problem doing gratitude meditation but who never believed in any God because their Buddhism has no concept of Gods.
Monopoly? Not sure what in what I wrote prompted this particular strawman.
I think you suggest that not believing in God means that you shouldn't feel gratitude as long as you don't have a person towards whom you can be grateful. Doing gratitude jouranling is much harder when you have to identify a specific actor for everything that you identified to be grateful about.
In that model atheists can still be grateful towards the actions of other people, but if you limit your ability to feel gratitude in such a way I think you will feel less of it. Given that other people are just a bunch of atom, I also don't see a good reason why you should be grateful towards people but not towards other constellation of atoms that provide utility for you.
It looks like the lay person's definition (The quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness) is somewhat different from the psych one (Gratitude is an emotion expressing appreciation for what one has). I'm now confused enough as to which one I feel that I shall stop here.
Well, I used to think that I do not believe in anything supernatural that affects what happens to me, but I'm wondering if maybe I actually do alieve in it. For example, a few days ago I had a close call in traffic, and when a collision I fully expected to happen just a second prior did not transpire, I mentally thanked... whom? I definitely had a clear feeling of gratitude for escaping, and I don't normally mean it literally when I say "Thank God!". So, who or what did I feel thankful to? I've never been religious, and I got rid of most of my superstitions over the years, but apparently there is still something there, and I do not know how to react to this knowledge.
What would be the proper reaction after a close call? Shrug and say "got lucky this time, should be more cautious next time"? What about when waiting for a diagnosis, what does sort-of-praying "please, please, let everything be OK" say about one's true beliefs? I know that I am much better at not blaming the world when something bad happens to me by chance than at not thanking the world when something good happens. Should it not be symmetric? Which part of a normally non-religious person wakes up and asserts itself in a crisis situation out of their control? Should it be embraced, suppressed, worked on?