If that is the case, why do so many people insist on comparing a framework, such as rails to node.js? Wouldn't the more relvant comparison be node.js vs ruby, or rails vs meteor.
So many people make such comparisons I feel like I'm the one who is crazy. Of course, I probably am, but that may have nothing to do with rails and node.js comparisons. :-)
After battling Rails' conventions and getting a bit sick of learning a lot of things that are only useful in the Rails world, I figured it might be nice to do everything almost from scratch (Express.js as a shortcut though). I'm using RethinkDB without an ORM, although over time I suspect my approach will become more ORM-like over time and I might just switch to one of the existing RethinkDB ORM's.
It's loads of fun being able to understand most steps of the process of building a complete website that includes authentication, a database, a CMS, and whatnot, especially after relying on Rails' magic for a lot of things. I guess I just really prefer the explicitness of it all.
That said, if money and/or time were an issue, or if the end product would have to be worked on by other developers, I'd probably go for RoR or Django. The amount of stuff it 'just' takes care of is much more than one might assume at first, and the amount of pitfalls in the category 'not knowing what you don't know' are not insignificant (XSS, for example).
Rake is a raw server, giving the minimum to do something. Ruby on Rails is a full stack framework giving a complete solution for both: the front-end (template, asset pipeline...) and the back-end (API, routes, ORM, security...).