Greetings Cooran,
cooran wrote:If the Buddha was mistaken on this .... what else would you say he was mistaken on?
I am having trouble finding the sutta reference online at the moment (may it's not online), but there is a sutta where the Buddha says that he does not dispute with the wise. Accordingly, if the prevailing wisdom is such, and he has no experiential knowledge which contradicts it, he will not argue against what the wise say, for what basis would he have to do so? Perhaps you or someone else may recall the sutta and know where it can be found? The Buddha was not omniscient in a God-like sense, and there are suttas in the Pali Canon which make this abundantly clear, so there was much "worldly" knowledge about which he would have no basis to reject.
That said, anything he was "mistaken" on, as a result of accepting what the wise say (in the absence of contradictory experiential knowledge of his own) is absolutely inconsequential to the Path and not worth any of us being particularly bothered about. That he didn't know about the workings of tectonic plates and such, is totally irrelevant from the perspective of the Dhamma he taught (as per the quote below)
cooran wrote:Or what else can be taken as ultimate truth in what He says?
Extract from SN 56.31:
Simsapa Sutta
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"And what have I taught? 'This is stress... This is the origination of stress... This is the cessation of stress... This is the path of practice leading to the cessation of stress': This is what I have taught. And why have I taught these things? Because they are connected with the goal, relate to the rudiments of the holy life, and lead to disenchantment, to dispassion, to cessation, to calm, to direct knowledge, to self-awakening, to Unbinding. This is why I have taught them.
That is the "ultimate truth" of what he says. The Four Noble Truths.
cooran wrote:Maybe it could be that Ven. Dhammika didn't understand the teachings?
I would suggest that he did understand, and was suitably and respectfully generous to the Buddha in his analysis. A scientist for example, approaching the matter from a worldly perspective, could have just blatantly dismissed what the Buddha said as ancient ignorance.
Metta,
Retro.
"Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things."