Is carbon dioxide organic or inorganic?
It is entirely arbitrary whether you call it an organic compound or not, though most would not. 

The distinction you make that organic compounds should be found in living things is not a useful criterion. Moreover you are wrong that carbon dioxide isn't: it is both made and used by living things. Animals make it when they metabolise sugars to release energy; plants consume it when they build more complex organic molecules through photosynthesis. In fact most organic molecules are, ultimately, derived from $\ce{CO2}$. 

Even more importantly most molecules considered organic are neither made by nor are found in living things. Chemists make new carbon compounds all the time (tens of millions in the history of chemistry) and most have never been made by animals or plants.

The organic/inorganic terminology is mostly very simple: covalent compounds containing carbon are organic. The only fuzzy area is around very simple molecules like $\ce{CO2}$ where the distinction doesn't matter much. So we would not normally think of diamond or silicon carbide as organic. But we might (though many would not) call calcium carbide organic because it contains a $\ce{C2}$ unit with a carbon-carbon triple bond. 

However since the terminology is mostly very obvious and also somewhat arbitrary, it isn't worth much argument to sort out those very simple but awkward edge cases.