Stalemate is not logical to me

Logical or not logical, sometimes you have to accept the rules of the game. You could say that the rule for castling is illogical, or illogical that you can have several queens on the board after pawn promotion, but that's nothing you can do anything about.

One of the strength of the chess game is the fact that the rules have been the same for a couple of hundred years. The whole mass of theory have been accumulated through the years until the point where it is now, and it continues to develop. If you change the rules, you have to start over from scratch. For instance, if you change the stalemate rule, the entire endgame theory would have to be rewritten. Hundred of years of experience and theory would be worthless, and I doubt that the chess world would ever recover. Chess would be just one game among others, and it would be nothing special about it.

I don't think it's illogical. Quite the opposite.

The point of checkmate is this: "your king is about to be taken, cannot be saved in any way, hence you lose".

Stalemate is not the same thing, because there would be no king capture in the next move. It is a consequence of two rules:

1. To win, you *must* checkmate the opponent's king, as in "give an imparable check". This is the winning condition of chess.
2. A player has to move on each turn, and cannot pass the move.

In a stalemate, one player cannot legally move, and the game cannot continue, but there is no winning condition met. A win without winning condition would be illogical. A draw is the only logical conclusion.

a draw would not be the logical outcome if the scoring system were changed

Quite agreed

Because it is not Checkmate.  There can only be one objective in a game.  In a zero sum game such as chess that objective is to defeat the opponent.  Almost checkmate is not good enough. 

Luxembourg is completely surrounded but it is still a country.  A king completely surrounded is still a king.

The OP has not offered any logic to support the hypothesis that the stalemate is illegal.  Logic starts with premises and proceeds logically to a conclusion.  The premises of this discussion are quite unclear.  I am not finding any logical argument being made here, just disconnected claims about the way things are and the way things should be.  I am not saying no logical argument could be constructed to support the proposition that something's illogical about stalemates, i'm just saying that no logical argument has yet been presented.

Seems to have the great makings of a very long thread full of silliness (nothing wrong with that, right?)

Theoretically stalemates shoud not exist.  The attacking player should either be strong enough to checkmate or simply have insufficient material where a move not leading to stalemate gives up some tangible advantage. 

Therefore, stalemate exists because the attackng player choses not to win or cannot win.  Thus it is a draw.

Chess is a game of war and there have beens wars that were fought to standstills where neither side wins. Stalemate also provides an additional element of interest and surprise in chess so that even if someone has overwhelming force in a game he still has not won the game until the game is actually over. 

Chess is still just one game among many others..

I don't think many people understand what the OP is trying to say. All of the guys who are saying that stalemate was created to keep almost lost games going are completely incorrect. This is why..
Chess has been played for centuries, in it's very initial developing stage chess was not meant to be marketed or anything. It was not made to attract spectators, it was just a pasttime for kings and other royals completely meant for enjoyment. 
Therefore the OP is trying to ask the logic behind stalemate, the logic of making it more enjoyable or spectator friendly is completely false as chess was not made to make it a competitive sport played for money. So they must have had some logic why stalemate is a draw. This is what his question is. 

read #27 and #29

What exactly is your contribution here?  You can read the rules and make a logical argument just as easily as anyone.

There is a better way to score a draw than .5?

After careful thought, I have to admit that I agree with this thread. It does look very silly to have two queens, two knights, and two bishops surrounding your opponents king, only to have it be a draw because you messed up slightly. However, I don't think that the concept of drawing should be taken from the game. What I think would be a suitable solution is to just eliminate the rule that you cannot willingly put yourself in check, and make the king a capturable piece, which upon capture ends the game in the favor of the captor. Let's be honest, the rule that your king cannot willingly move into check is bogus and only serves those beginning to learn the game. This would also force the opposing king, in a situation that would be considered stalemate now (i.e. 2 queens, 2 knights and 2 bishops surrounding lone king), to move into check, which seems vastly more realistic and true to the flow of the game.

White to move. Mate in two. (White can mate in one, but that's stalemate and should be punished.)

Pretty illogical reasons there, first of all a king surrounded will obviously be killed, so you are saying that if 10 armed people completely surround you and there is no chance to escape, you would still consider them to be at equal footing with you?(till you are alive) .  In reality i just could not see people agreeing to make stalemate a draw because DUH a surrounded king is still a king... what kind of reasoning is that?

A draw means both armies are of equal strength at a a given point, in the game of chess it symbolizes a peace treaty as neither can be defeated. If one army surrouds the other army's king, then how can you consider them to be of equal strength? 
Try something different. 

What is your source for this information? As far as I know, no one knows how or why chess was invented or who invented it. Maybe it was invented by the fish people who came down to earth in eggs. As for modern day players, chess is made more enjoyable by stalemate, at least to me. It adds an extra element, an easter egg that tells all the rich people that no matter how wealthy they are they still might be hit by a car someday or an elephant might fall on them and where would they be then? 

I have a reason from historical references of what maybe the logic of stalemate. First, keep in mind that chess is supposed to be a game to imitate war, it was made for kings and nobels and is supposed to stimulate all conditions of war in a board game.
Now if you notice carefully, one concept of war is missing in chess, which is the concept of puppet kings. It's where one king technically defeat the other king but still does not take the kingdom and returns the kingdom to the original king after taking the loot. I think this is what stalemate symbolizes.  
My point is that in old eras, a stalemate could have been delibirately employed by the winning side simply to symbolize that they are just interested in the loot and not in killing the other king.
Maybe this concept which was prevelant in those days could have been incorporated in chess by the way of stalemate, which means that a side could easily kill the other king but decides not to do so and instead leave him with no options, thus making him essentially a puppet.

I understood his question from 1.5 years ago perfectly ;)...he's just wrong, and so are you.  Take a game design course or read a book about it or something...you will find dozens of examples of games that have been around forever that have a "great equalizer" mechanism that allows a player losing badly to try and salvage something from it.  It keeps the game from becoming completely boring in the endgame.  It has nothing to do with marketing competitive chess.

The "it's illogical in a game of war" argument is ridiculous.  For starters, in a realistic war game, queens/viziers and bishops would not be game pieces, armored knights would be way more powerful and run right over pawns (how can a horse with an armored rider jump?), and rooks would not be able to move at all.  

It's a game ;).  Arguably the most successful game design in human history, and stalemate makes perfect sense as a game mechanic.

If you want a more realistic war game, go play wargames on hex maps.