Ruby is an amazingly powerful language that many, many people use every day with very little drama. To me, it seems to only be the "english" online RoR community that has issues.
Unfortunately, as a Ruby language user, I don't know why the problems exist or what would fix them. :(
In my experience, many programmers trained in a specific lanaguge or framework, tend to become attached to it over time to the point of becoming zealous about its benefits. If you define religion as being overzealous, then it not just Ruby/ROR, but C++, .Net, PHP, Perl and most other languages. Most find it difficult to be agnostic about their choice of the language/framework they select and use regularly. Just my 2 cents :)
Ask any Rubyist why they love the language, and they'll most likely tell you it's because it allows them to turn their ideas into reality very quickly.
That can be a very valuable advantage. If you're exploring languages to base your startup on, and you ignore Ruby solely because it's not engineer-y enough for you, I don't rate your chances of success very highly.
Unfortunately, as a Ruby language user, I don't know why the problems exist or what would fix them. :(